


Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

by elzed



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-14
Updated: 2009-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 10:40:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elzed/pseuds/elzed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Kara was the good girl and Lee the bad boy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Picon (Goodbye to All That)

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed, as ever, by the marvellous overnighter. Many thanks too to helen_c for her thoughtful insights, and to the lovely stars_like_dust for rooting for this fic. 
> 
> The title is borrowed from Dylan Thomas's "Do not got gentle into that good night".

_  
**Prologue (Losing the Faith)**  
_

_"Lee?"_

_"Shh."_

_"Lee, dad isn't coming back, is he?"_

_"I don't know, Zak."_

_"Lee?"_

_"Come on, Zak, Mom told us to go to sleep."_

_"You're not going to leave me, are you?"_

_"I won't leave you, okay?_ Never. _Now go to sleep."_  
  


*********************

The day William Adama left his wife and two young sons, eight-year-old Lee held a distraught Zak in his arms and swore to himself that he would do what his father could not, and become his little brother's protector and role model, if not in so many words. Zak wasn't six yet, small for his age; and Lee knew better than anyone how scared his brother felt.

By the time Zak was eighteen, Lee was a model cadet and trainee Viper pilot at the Fleet Academy, justifiably proud of the younger brother he'd helped raise despite the best efforts of his drunk mother and his absentee father.

When Zak turned nineteen and joined up, Lee had made Lieutenant and was busy carving a career as a promising young officer, eager to prove to his father that he could, even if his father didn't deserve it; even more eager to show his brother how to become a man.

At twenty-one, Zak was following in his footsteps, desperate to fly Vipers even though he wasn't as gifted, and Lee was beginning to think that perhaps he had taken the role model thing a little seriously. But his father had always said a man wasn't a man until he wore the wings of a Viper pilot, and one way or another, both his sons had taken him to his word.

At twenty-two, Zak was dead, and Lee’s life fell apart.

***************************

The day Zak's Viper exploded in a fireball, Lee decided there was no point in trying to do the right thing and follow the rules. He'd failed to protect his brother – most likely had hastened his death by laying the career path that got Zak into flying – although as far as Lee was concerned their father bore the lion's share of that responsibility.

Either way, it didn't matter – Zak was gone, and Lieutenant Adama no longer cared that he was on a fast-track to a captain's commission. The evening of the funeral he walked into the seediest bar he could find in his mother's respectable Caprica City neighborhood, bought a bottle of ambrosia, and started on a new fast-track to get good and drunk.

The appearance of his dead brother's fiancée – half an hour and four shots later – was to be expected; if there was a bar of ill-repute within five klicks, Kara could be counted on to find it. She slid into the seat nearest him, grabbed the bottle and took a long swallow.

"Hey! Get your own," Lee complained.

Kara shrugged and signaled to the barman. Two minutes later, another bottle and shot glass joined Lee's on the table.

"Planning to get so drunk I'll have to carry you home?" she asked Lee.

"That was just the once, so you can stop rubbing my face in it."

"Twice, Lee, twice – if you count the airshow at Pylos Beach."

"Helo was doing most of the carrying, if I remember correctly, so no, that doesn't count."

"I'm amazed you remember anything about that night," she retorted. "Whatever. You're still a lightweight – although not literally, 'cause you weigh a frakking ton – so watch it, okay?"

"Frak you," he mumbled, and downed a fifth shot.

They drank next to each other, companionably, for the next fifteen minutes, without exchanging a word, then Lee turned to look at Kara and she was crying, which instantly made his eyes burn and his throat itch. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close and she let go on his shoulder, discreet tears replaced by great racking sobs, while he muffled his own in her hair.

"What are you going to do?" she asked him after they'd calmed down and she'd wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and Lee realized he had no idea, except that he didn't want to go on like this.

"I don't know. Get off this rock for a start, and quit War College, because I'm done playing dad's game."

She raised an eyebrow at him in surprise.

"I thought you liked War College? And aren't you headed for early promotion?"

Lee snorted.

"Frak early promotion. I did everything the right way and I still didn't manage…" He stopped and took a deep breath. _Calm_. "I think I need a change of scene. What about you?"

She didn't reply immediately but studied her nails for a minute or two, until Lee started wondering what she was hiding. When she finally looked up at him her eyes were steady.

"Your father asked me whether I'd come and serve under him on _Galactica_. I said I'd think about it."

Lee felt as though the floor had dipped under his seat.

"You want to serve with my dad?"

"I know you and him don't see eye to eye, but _Galactica_ 's a sought-after posting, and he's got a good reputation as a CO."

"Yeah, I know. Treats his crew like family. Shame he doesn't treat his family like family," Lee said bitterly.

"Lee, come on. I need a change of scenery too. I don't think I can go back to teaching kids to fly Vipers, not now. Not for a long while…"

"I know you're cut up about Zak. But it wasn't your fault," he said, but Kara wasn't listening.

"Zak was my student, Lee. _I'm_ the one who taught him all the tricks of the trade, showed him _how_ to fly if he wanted to pass Basic Flight. And I knew in my heart of hearts that he didn't really have it in him to be a great Viper pilot. Even a good Viper pilot. I should have had the balls to tell him and stop him from taking his test."

She sounded bleak, defeated. Lee's chest tightened.

"It isn't your fault, and Kara, there's nothing you could've done. If not you, he would have found someone else. Zak was conditioned to do this – we both were."

"I watched him the day he took his test, Lee. I checked with his examiner; and I saw what he did. He passed because I taught him ways of doing the required maneuvers that were easier than they should be, and…"

She was beginning to sound hysterical. Lee grabbed her shoulder and shook it gently.

"Kara, look at me. You know as well as I do you're not the only instructor with tricks up your sleeve. We all had our shortcuts…"

"I bet _you_ didn't.”

"Shut up – we all had our tricks and our ways of getting by, and even if you think Zak didn't have the chops for a Viper pilot, at the end of the day he passed Basic Flight, period. The people who bear a real responsibility are the ones who taught him to worship Vipers, and that would be Dad and me."

Saying it made it sound so much more real than it did in his head, and a wave of guilt washed over him.

"Hades, Lee, don't you start!"

"What? You think you're the only one who's allowed to feel guilty?"

Kara smiled, but there were fresh tears in her eyes.

"I wouldn't presume. For the record, your father's frakked up beyond all recognition. You were pretty harsh towards him."

"Good," Lee said viciously. "If it wasn't for him, Zak would never have tried to become a pilot."

"You could have held back from laying that on him today of all days."

"Why? It's true. And you're taking his side already?"

She raised her hands in defeat. "I give up, Lee – whatever I say you're going to use to attack your dad and I don't want to be a part of this. I don't think Zak would've wanted that, either."

Lee's eyes started burning again.

"That's low, Kara."

"It's true."

"Listen, if you want to suck up to the old man, go right ahead. I'm out."

She looked shocked.

"You're resigning your commission?"

Lee shook his head. "No – I don't think I'm quite that frakked up yet. And I can't imagine not flying Vipers, because Dad did a number on me, too. But I don't want anything more. Frak the career ladder, seeking my own command, all that shit. You of all people should understand."

He drained his glass one last time and stood up. His bottle was two-thirds empty but he felt barely drunk, nowhere near the numbness he was seeking. Kara was looking confused, and despite the hollow circles under her eyes and her red nose, more beautiful than he cared to acknowledge.

It hit him that now, she would always be Zak's fiancée, his brother's death preserving their relationship frozen in time. She’d always be as unattainable as she'd been when Zak was alive. In a way, it was a good thing that she was off to _Galactica_ , because that was one place Lee was unlikely ever to visit. As much as it hurt to think of losing touch with his best friend, it hurt less than seeing her every day and having to pretend she was nothing more.

"I'll be seeing you, Kara," he said, leaning to place a quick kiss on her forehead, and then he turned his back on her and walked out into the cold night air, cursing himself for being an emotional cripple and a coward.

Three years he'd known Kara Thrace, and he'd wanted her from the very first time they'd met, but never had the balls to risk their friendship for it. Unlike Zak. Lee had envied him for his willingness to embrace his feelings, to lay himself open to rejection, to take that leap of faith.

After twenty-five years of honing his self-control, Lee was coming to realize that perhaps it wasn't all it was hyped to be.

*************************************

**_Chapter One: Picon (Goodbye to All That)_ **

Dropping out of War College was less of a big deal than he expected. With Zak's death as an excuse, Lee didn't even get pilloried for it. They just reassigned him to a junior pilot position in the Fleet, back on Picon – working with knuckledraggers on repairs and improvement, taking Vipers out for practice flights – and the newfound freedom was intoxicating.

He lived from day to day, freed from the shackles of responsibility and family, his only concession an occasional letter to his mother – and a video call every couple of months, because no matter what, he couldn’t deprive her of her surviving son.

The drawback was that the one person he would’ve wanted to waste his time with was light-years away, and wouldn't answer his letters. After a few weeks, he stopped writing to Kara and decided to focus on whatever entertainment he could find around him. Once he went looking, it was all too easy to fall in with a work-hard, play-hard crowd of pilots and deckhands.

Lee learned a few things about himself in the months following Zak's death. First, he had a better head for booze than Kara gave him credit for; second, he was an easier lay than he’d thought (and there was no shortage of attractive women willing to prove that point); and third, he actually enjoyed a good fight, because it cleared his head like nothing else when anger, guilt or grief became overwhelming.

The weeks ticked by, merging seamlessly into each other, and it was only now and then that events – or people – that brought up the past made a real impact on him.

***************************

“Hey, Apollo! Care to buy an old buddy a drink?”

Lee slid out from under the bird he was tinkering with. Helo was standing in front of him, duffel slung over his shoulder, a broad smile on his face, and suddenly Lee missed Kara so much it physically hurt. He pushed himself up and shook Helo’s hand.

“Good to see you! What are you doing here?”

“Visit for a couple days, spend some leave time, maybe do a little work. I came for a course about the new Raptors – they’re changing the engine specs and giving us the lowdown tomorrow. Heard you were back here so I thought I’d find you for some R’n’R.”

“Well you’ve come to the right place – I’m off-duty soon. Need a place to stay?”

“Anything’s better than the pilot bunkroom at the Academy, so if you’re offering…”

Lee laughed and dug into his pocket.

“Here.”

He tossed Helo the keys to his quarters.

“Nothing fancy but I have a living room and a couch. Officer’s block, blue eight, in the accommodation sector behind the main admin building. You can’t miss it. I’ll be around in a half-hour or so.”

He paused as Helo nodded and started walking away, but couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Any news on Starbuck?’

Helo stopped abruptly and turned to face Lee. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I was going to save it for later but I might as well tell you now. I’m going to see her soon – I’ve put in a request to join _Galactica_.”

Lee sighed. It seemed like the whole world worshipped at the altar of his father, and he was the only one who saw through the Commander to the flawed man.

“Say hi to her for me, will you? If she’s talking to me, which she wasn’t last time I checked.”

He’d rather choke than send his regards to the old man, even though he knew it made him look like a moody teenager.

That evening, he was determined to show Helo a good time. They were good enough friends, but always with the buffer of Kara – who’d known Helo from way back – and it was weird, at first. Lee couldn’t stop thinking about her, and found himself scanning the crowd in the bar he’d picked, looking out for shaggy blonde hair and attitude out of habit and want. He figured he might as well get drunk with Helo, because the ambrosia here was decent, at least; and then maybe they could team up and go chasing tail. Seeing Kara everywhere was generally a good indicator that he needed to get laid.

“So, Agathon – what’s your poison? Ambrosia here’s not bad, but they’ve got decent beer, and even sparkling wine, you know, if you feel adventurous,” he said with a smirk.

Helo made a face.

“Do I look like a Leonis Estate drinker to you, Adama? Shot of green with a beer chaser will do me, thanks.”

Lee grinned.

“My kind of guy,” he said, waving two fingers at the barmaid.

“Your usual?” Helo said, and Lee nodded.

Lee smiled as the drinks arrived. The barmaid was a curvy brunette, who batted her eyelids at him when he tucked a bill into her front pocket, his hand grazing her breast. When Lee turned back to Helo, he was met by a pair of raised eyebrows.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Helo said. “Just…”

“Just what?”

“Forget it. Thanks for the drinks.”

He raised the shot glass towards Lee and drained it in one, chasing it with a long swallow of beer.

Lee followed suit.

“So where’ve you been stationed since I saw you last?” he asked.

“Caprica, mainly. Living on Delphi base, doing routine patrol work around the moons, short-haul Fleet transport, that kind of stuff. How about you?”

“Me? Flying Vipers, taking the new Mark VII through its paces, hanging out around here… Nothing much. Having fun,” Lee said, and as if to prove his point an arm snaked around his waist and a statuesque redhead whispered something in his ear. She was at least half a head taller than Lee, and Helo’s eyebrows raised a shade further.

“Hey, Stella. Meet Helo – a friend from Academy days. Helo, this is Stella. Whatever you do, don’t take her up if she challenges you to a game of triad,” Lee warned.

“Why not?”

Lee leaned forward and stage-whispered in Helo’s ear. “Because she cheats worse than Starbuck, that’s why. And you’ll go home broke and shirtless.”

Stella laughed throatily. “Apollo, as if I’d do that to a friend of yours.”

She moved from behind Lee and came to stand between the two friends, as Lee shifted to give her space. He knew better than to stand between Stella and her prey, and it looked like she’d made her choice this evening.

“Why not? You’ve done it to me.”

“Well maybe it’s because I wanted to see you shirtless, hotshot. Although…” she added, looking at Helo with a lazy predator’s gaze, “I can imagine _you’d_ be a pretty sight too.”

“What makes you think you need to fleece me to get me naked?” Helo replied, rising to the bait, and Lee burst out laughing.

He’d been looking forward to going on the hunt with Helo, but Lee wasn’t about to cheat a friend out of a good time, and Stella was definitely a match for him, not just in height, either. Helo had had a bit of a reputation with the ladies back at the Academy (Lee suspected that Kara probably featured somewhere in his past, but really didn’t want to know for sure); and Stella was a maneater of the first order, with a taste for pilots. Lee could testify to her plentiful talents.

Helo shot him an enquiring glance, and Lee gave him the all clear with an imperceptible shake of his head.

“So, Stella, can I interest you in a shot of ambrosia? Or perhaps a cocktail?” Helo suggested. “And I don’t suppose you came with a friend to entertain my buddy here, because I fear I’m about to neglect him.”

“Him? Honey, he doesn’t need help to find company, trust me. And I’ll have what you’re having, thanks. I wouldn’t recommend the cocktails here, unless you have a death wish.”

“Maybe I do,” Helo said, sliding a hand up her thigh in a blatant but effective move, and Lee decided it was time to make himself scarce.

“I’ll be back later,” he mouthed at Helo, and slipped into the crowd, determined to find a partner for the night.

There were several familiar faces scattered throughout – fellow pilots, drinking buddies from the military, and one or two girls he’d taken to bed, but nothing that caught his eye especially. Besides, he made a point of not getting attached to anyone, and while there was nothing wrong with buddyfraks, on the whole Lee Adama preferred one night stands or very short term affairs to anything more serious or long-lasting.

Stella was right – he didn’t need help to find female company, providing they didn’t expect much more than a good time and no hard feelings. And he liked to think they _did_ have a good time in bed with him. The kind of attention to detail and excellent hand-eye coordination that he’d honed at the controls of a Viper came in useful when guiding a partner to climax.

He spotted a likely candidate sitting at a table with an empty glass in front of her, scanning the crowd around her as she tried to ignore the couple kissing in the chair beside her. Tan skin, curly shoulder-length hair, tight dress, athletic body – she was either Fleet, or Fleet groupie; there were many around the base, of both sexes. More to the point she was pretty, and clearly bored, which was all the invitation Lee needed.

He grabbed a couple of ambrosias at the bar and made his way to the table. He knew he looked Fleet through and through, from the haircut to the fatigues and the dogtags around his neck, and when he caught her eye and smiled, she did a quick check before returning the smile. Groupie, he guessed, and he knew he was in. Viper pilots _always_ scored with the groupies.

Sure enough, it took all of thirty seconds for her – Cassia, it turned out – to start asking.

“So, Lee, what do you do? I can see you’re in the military…” and she looked at him from underneath her lashes.

Lee grinned. “I’m a pilot.”

Her eyes widened. She looked almost greedy, and Lee felt a twinge of irritation – much as he liked the fact that his job got him laid, sometimes a man wanted to feel that he was more than just a trophy frak.

Then again, Cassia had nice curves, and a mouth that looked made for sucking cock, so he wasn’t really going to complain.

“So what do you fly?” she asked, leaning towards him so he got an even better view of the breasts he’d already noticed, creamy and full. Lee felt his cock stir.

“Vipers.”

The look on her face pretty much guaranteed him sexual favors within the half-hour, he figured, and as if on cue her hand landed on his thigh.

“Vipers, huh? Tell me more.”

Lee rattled off a few well-worn lines about the excitement of flying such a maneuverable ship, the feeling of power as you shot out of a launch tube, the precision strikes of the weapons, and each platitude had Cassia moving closer to him, until she was practically in his lap. She was drinking in his every word.

He downed his shot.

“Want another one?”

She shrugged, licking her lips as she looked him in the eye, and the half-erection he was sporting turned into a bona fide hard-on.

“Sure.”

She paused.

“Or we could go for a walk,” she said breathily, and Lee was out of his seat and dragging her through the door almost before she finished the suggestion.

Six steps out of the bar and he was crowding her against a brick wall, mouth sucking at a pulse point on her neck while she gasped, his cock hard against her hip. She was rubbing herself on his thigh, and the hot pressure was ratcheting up the excitement. He wondered if they’d make it to a bed. He didn’t really care.

Eventually they sloped around a dark corner and into an alleyway that often got busy on wild nights. Cassia dropped to her knees and attacked Lee’s pants with her teeth, switching to fingers when his belt defeated her. He watched as she pulled his hard cock out of his boxers and swallowed it in one swift movement that made him groan loudly.

“Frakking hell,” he swore, “you don’t waste time, do you?”

He felt her laugh against him as she attacked his dick with enthusiasm and not a little skill, and he got lost in the patterns she was tracing with her tongue. He grabbed her head with one hand, fingers tightening in her hair, and pushed himself deeper in. She swallowed around him, her throat sheathing his cock, and kept going with her tongue, teasing him further.

“Oh frak, yes,” Lee breathed out, thrusting into her willing mouth.

He came with a groan and a string of muttered expletives and she swallowed every drop, milking him expertly, until he felt his knees sag and released his hold on her head to stroke her hair.

“Frak, baby, that was…”

“Glad you liked it, flyboy,” she replied as she got back to her feet, and her casual reference to his pilot status set his teeth on edge. Still, he owed her, and he believed in doing the right thing, so he pulled her to him and kissed her sloppily, one hand sliding down to hitch up her skirt and burrow into her underwear. The pilot thing obviously really got to her, because she was wet and ready for him, and it only took a few quick strokes to tip her over the edge.

He watched her when she came – somehow the sight of a woman climaxing was enough to redeem the most meaningless of fraks, in his book – and Cassia certainly didn’t disappoint, moaning and shaking as she reached orgasm. She was also commendably laid back and didn’t bat an eyelid when Lee hinted that he had a friend waiting inside, and that it had been nice meeting her. They parted with a quick kiss and a smile.  
As he made his way back into the bar, wondering whether Helo had left, he almost regretted not having taken her number.

He found Helo where he’d left him, except now Stella was straddling him and the two of them were engaged in some serious groping. Lee leaned over and tapped his fellow pilot on the shoulder, just enough to get his attention.

“Sorry, Agathon – heading home to grab some sleep. Gotta be out by 0700 tomorrow, flight prep. Catch you later.”

The drunken grin he got in response confirmed what he already knew – Helo wouldn’t be bunking on his couch tonight, and Stella was in for a good time. That much was clear.

On his way home, Lee wondered again whether he shouldn’t have made more of Cassia, maybe taken her home. He felt lonely all of a sudden, and even though his desire was sated, the prospect of another night in an empty bed didn’t appeal.

In the end, though, he slept soundly and when Helo stumbled in sometime after dawn, Lee barely heard him before pulling the blankets over his head and sinking back into deep sleep.

For the first time in a long time, he dreamed of Kara; and in his dream she was as wanton and as skilled as Cassia had been, her luscious lips wrapped around him, beseeching eyes staring straight at him as she coaxed him into an all-too-real climax that had him gasping as he woke to the last shudders of his pulsing cock. If he’d cared to admit it, it wasn’t the first wet dream Kara Thrace had starred in, but Lee had honestly thought he was past that stage.

Evidently not.

********************

He caught up with his temporary roommate at the mess that evening. Lee was ravenous, having spent the day flying refitted Vipers with virtually no break, and he was on his second plate of stew when Helo dropped his tray opposite him and sat down.

“Thanks for the introduction last night,” Helo said before attacking his own plate, and Lee grinned.

“Hey, don’t thank me – Stella obviously took a shine to you.”

“You can say that again. She’s one heck of a woman, Apollo. As I gather you know.”

Lee shrugged.

“She’s a friend, and sometimes, well… Anyhow, I’m glad you had a good time.”

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. I thought I saw you leave with a girl last night, early on. I was obviously wrong.”

Lee chewed thoughtfully on a stringy piece of meat.

“Maybe you weren’t.”

“You what?” Helo eyeballed him for a second and laughed, a short bark. “Don’t tell me you frakked her in a back alley…”

“Come on, Helo, I seem to remember you weren’t such a prude at the Academy…”

“That was _me_. This is you, Lee, and _you_ were a frakking prude at the Academy.”

“I was not!” Lee replied hotly, even though he knew there was more than a hint of truth there.

“Ok, but you weren’t the kind of guy who gets blown outside a club, either. I should know, ‘cause I was.”

Helo was stretched out in his chair, arms dangling over the back of the seat, and the expression on his face was quizzical and slightly worried.

Lee sighed. Somehow he’d been expecting to have to go through this, but it came sooner than he’d thought it would.

“What do you want me to say? That I’ve changed since Zak died? Big frakking news. Stuff that seemed important isn’t so much now, and I guess I’ve reassessed my priorities.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?”

“Life’s short, Helo, give me a break. I don’t want to spend all of it climbing the career ladder and behaving like a model officer. And I don’t see why the frak _you_ of all people are lecturing me about getting some. You spent half your time trying to get me laid when we were cadets – why the change of heart?”

There was a pause, and then Helo started laughing.

“You got me there, Apollo. Can’t say I have a straight answer to that.”

But he wouldn’t look Lee straight in the eye, and Lee couldn’t think of anything to say which would make it right, make _him_ right. He had changed, for sure, but he had no intention of analyzing the how and why with Helo. Especially not now that Helo, like Kara before him, was headed for his father’s command, in a subtle form of betrayal that cut deeper than Lee wished to acknowledge.

“Well now we’ve cleared this, want to join me in a hand of triad tonight? I know some guys who run a pretty good game.”

“High stakes?” Helo asked, the worried frown replaced with an eager glint in his eye.

“Four years of being thrashed by Starbuck and you still haven’t learned your lesson?”

“Hey – you didn’t do too well against her either,” Helo shot back, stung.

“That was then. This is the new, debauched me, Agathon. Besides, she’s half a system away, so I think we’re both safe for now.”

 

*************************

 

The game was on base, in the senior pilots’ quarters, and it was well attended enough that the brass was willing to turn a blind eye to it. It was probably better for morale than the alternative; even the most disciplined of soldiers needed to blow off steam sometimes.

Lee found it a useful outlet when memories threatened to overcome him.

He hadn’t lied when he said that he had become a better triad player. His natural recklessness and pilot-trained killer instinct, freed from the shackles of caution and discipline, led him to take wild, high-grossing risks. He lost heavily sometimes, but he was good at reading people, and good at gauging odds, so the stakes were worth it. Helo made the mistake of thinking he was playing with the old Lee, and lost twice to him in quick succession, even though he was holding better cards.

“Told you I’d sharpened my skills, Helo,” Lee said, knocking back another shot of ambrosia before sweeping his winnings one-handed into the growing pile in front of him. “You better wise up or you’re going to be making my bed tomorrow morning.”

“Didn’t know you swung that way, Apollo,” Ensign Benning said with a saucy grin and a wink, and three of the other pilots guffawed. Lee was pretty sure it was common knowledge that he’d knocked boots with her.

Nevertheless, he rose to the bait and made an anguished face.

“I thought you of all people should know better, Static! Am I that forgettable?”

Helo rolled his eyes at him, and Lee ignored the desire to kick the smug bastard in the ankle. Instead, he shuffled the pack expertly.

“You all in for another?”

Static groaned and pushed her chair back, shaking her head.

“I know when I’m beat, and it’s three weeks to payday,” she said and shot Lee a last lingering look before walking out, followed by two others. The door shut behind them and Helo pushed the latch across it without leaving his chair. Even if they got some leeway from the brass, they had to be discreet, which is why they were packed in a stuffy fourth-floor study with bare walls and a tiny window looking out on a brick wall. Not that any of them gave a rat’s ass about the view.

The six other players around the table stayed put and Lee dealt them in; Helo, Catcall, Shady, Queen Bee, Bluffer and Esperanza. Three Viper pilots – one a former battlestar CAG on the brink of retirement – two Raptor pilots, and the deputy chief of the deck all around one table; and he had nearly two hundred cubits in front of him. It was shaping up to be a good night.

“So, Apollo, I hear that when you’re not boning your old Academy mates, you’ve volunteered for deep space test runs on the new Vipers,” Bluffer said, picking up his hand and fanning it out.

“Somebody has to do it, and with respect, sir, they’re not going to send your wizened old ass up there,” Lee answered, throwing a handful of cubits in the pot. “I’m in.”

“You’re lucky my hearing’s not as sharp as it used to be, Apollo, ‘cause I could swear you just dissed my flying abilities,” the old pilot growled. “Just for that, I’ll raise you twenty.”

“Deep space runs, Apollo? You remember what it’s like to fly out of atmosphere?” Helo teased.

“Last time I checked, atmospheric flying was marginally tougher than running freight insystem, cargo boy.”

The banter continued around the table, the pot steadily rising, until Helo spread out his hand and Lee had to concede defeat for the first time of the evening. But his luck held, eventually, and when Esperanza brought the game to a close by begging off just shy of 2300 on account of an early maintenance shift, Lee’s pile had almost doubled.

“Hell, Apollo, I thought I was doing well but you…” Helo whistled through his teeth as he watched Lee counting his winnings. “How much did you make?”

“Three-twenty… no, hang on. Maybe three-fifty. I guess I cleaned out Bluffer for the next month. Want to join me for a celebratory drink?” He didn’t wait for an answer before stuffing the cash in his fatigues and walking out, but he could hear Helo scrabbling to collect his winnings behind him.

“Wait up!”

The bar Lee took them too was darker and dingier than the one on the previous night, and clearly more of a hard drinker’s refuge than a pickup joint. Dark booths lined the walls, sheltering their occupants from the dim light; the air was thick with smoke and there was an overpowering smell of sour beer and hard liquor.

“Nice place,” Helo remarked as they slid into a booth and Lee ordered a bottle of Picon firewhiskey. He scanned the shadows around them. “Are you packing?”

“What?” Lee clocked Helo’s frown and looked around him. If he was honest, the bar’s slightly menacing atmosphere was part of its attraction. Including the fact that the odds of getting into a fight were significantly higher than in other places he might frequent. “No. Feeling nervous?”

“Feeling a little too sober for this place, maybe. And since we’ve been getting wasted all evening, that’s not what I’d call a good sign.”

As if on cue, the whiskey turned up and Lee poured them two generous shots.

“Are you sure about that?” Helo asked after downing the first one.

Lee gave him a blank look and poured another.

“I mean, we _have_ been drinking for three hours and…”

Lee slammed the bottle down and laid his hands flat on the table, leaning towards Helo menacingly.

“Ares, man, will you quit it with the sanctimonious tone? First you disapprove of my sex life and now you’re telling me I can’t drink? Who the frak appointed you as my moral guardian?”

Helo raised his hands in defense at Lee’s harsh tone.

“Frak, Lee, I didn’t mean it like this…”

“Maybe you didn’t, but you sure as hell sounded like it,” Lee said fiercely. “So I’ll ask you again: who the frak put you up to this?”

“Nobody. Will you quit it?”

But there was something in Helo’s eyes, again, and when he wouldn’t look up, Lee realized that he’d hit a raw nerve.

“It’s Kara, isn’t it? She’s asked you to check up on me,” he said flatly, and Helo’s sigh was answer enough. Lee sat back heavily in his seat and ran a hand through his hair before grabbing his shot and necking it.

“Not in so many words, no. But I know she’s been worrying about you, and…”

“Frak, Karl, I thought you were my friend, not some frakking spy sent over by Kara and my father to…”

Helo swore.

“It’s not like that, dammit! And the Commander has _nothing_ to do with it. Man, since you quit War College, we’ve _all_ been worried about you, all your friends. You went from being the best officer in your class to _this_? Viper jockey for hire? Living day to day like you don’t give a frak?”

“You make an awful lot of assumptions for someone who’s been here forty-eight hours,” Lee spat out. He was almost surprised at how angry the news made him, how righteous indignation was turning into rage as he listened.

“With respect, Lee, as you said yourself, you’ve changed since Zak died. Doesn’t take a genius to see that.”

“Cut that shit out! If Kara’s so godsdamned worried about me, why the frak didn’t she reply to any of the letters I sent? Why has she been incommunicado since she joined _Galactica_?”

Along with the rage, he could feel something else blossoming in his chest, threatening to choke him as he vented feelings that he hadn’t mentioned to anyone. He paused when he realized that his voice was on the verge of breaking, and that unless he kept it under control Helo was going to have more to report back to _Galactica_ than Lee ever wanted Kara or his father to know.

Helo’s face was a picture – mixed concern and hurt and anger all wrapped up in one confused package – and Lee let out a long sigh before slumping onto his elbows and staring at the beer-stained tabletop.

“I don’t know why she blanked you, but it’s Kara, and she’s pretty crappy at saying sorry and picking up the pieces, which is why I guess she wanted my opinion.”

“Ten months, Karl, it’s been ten months,” Lee said dully. “I’m mourning Zak and yes, I’m still frakked up about it and I probably will be for the rest of my life. I don’t really care what you tell Kara or my father; whether you think I’m a dead loss to the Fleet, drinking and whoring my way around Picon, or whatever. I don’t care anymore. Now will you frakking pour me a drink?”

On the other side of the table, Helo nodded and topped up their respective glasses. The promised celebration turned into a grim exercise in drunkenness, where the two pilots methodically worked their way through the whole bottle with minimal conversation. Lee was thinking about Zak, and Kara, and as far as he could tell so was Helo. They talked little, and mainly about work.

Later, when a group of rowdy drunks came into the bar and one of them jostled Helo, knocking his drink over him, Lee seized the opportunity to punch the asshole in the face and start a fight. There was something almost refreshing about switching to the physical mode and using adrenaline and pain to block off the grief and depression that had been accumulating all evening.

Even three sheets to the wind, a couple of combat-trained Fleet pilots in peak condition made a decent enough fighting team to turn the scuffle into a full-size brawl. Eventually the bar owner must have called the MPs to break it up because Lee found himself sprawled on the metal floor of a military truck, hands shackled behind his back, Helo’s ankles in his line of sight. His head was still ringing, and he could feel incipient bruises on his face and body that he bet would hurt like frak tomorrow, but apart from that he was whole. He craned his neck towards Helo.

“You okay?”

Helo had a bleeding nose, one eye swollen half-shut and he was cradling his right wrist in his left hand.

“I’ll live.”

“Sorry for starting this and getting you into hack. It’s a rotten way to spend your leave.”

“That it is.”

With a grunt, Lee rolled onto his back, ignoring the pain in his wrists, and sat up, wincing.

“Frak, Karl, I really am sorry. If it makes it any better, you should be out by tomorrow.”

“Is that so?”

“You don’t have my record here,” Lee said, trying to lighten the tone, and failing miserably.

“If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working,” Helo snapped back before collapsing against the side of the truck and closing his eyes. At least his hands were cuffed in front of him, and he could rest – Lee had no such option, so he tried to shift his weight onto his shoulder as best he could, and shut his eyes too for the short ride back to base.

He had been right – Helo was released the next morning, and cut short his stay, leaving for Caprica while Lee was still cooling his heels in hack. Last they saw of each other, Lee was doing situps on the floor when Helo walked in, duffel slung over his shoulder.

“I came to return the keys. And say thanks for the hospitality.” He’d regained some of his usual good humor, but Lee wasn’t fooled.

“It was good seeing you. Sorry I can’t give you a ride back to your ship.”

Helo shrugged. “I’m a big boy. I’ll make it on my own.”

Lee hesitated, and asked the question anyway.

“When are you going to _Galactica_?”

“Next month. Got any messages for anyone?”

Frak, Helo was still pissed. And Lee could only imagine what he’d be telling Kara, and his father, and anyone else who knew him on that ship, which seemed to have become the magnet for the ragtag remnants of his frakked up family, or what passed for it these days.

“Yeah, you should tell Kara to come visit. I think she’d find I can keep up with her these days.”

That brought a wry smile to Helo’s lips that made Lee want to punch him through the bars. He was getting tired of the condescension he felt oozing from the guy.

“Actually she’s kind of slowed down. From what I hear, she’s doing well; squadron leader, working with the CAG; hell, she’s on track to make captain next year at this rate.”

“And she probably has dinner with my dad every week, right, I get it, thanks,” Lee said, focusing all his attention on the ground in front of him. He didn’t trust himself to look up at Helo’s eyes without letting out the fact that he was angrier than he had a right to be, considering he hadn’t wanted into that little party in the first place. Still, it stung to know that his dad, godsdamn him, had filled the gap left by his sons by poaching their friends.

Two, three deep breaths, and he had regained some of the vaunted control that he’d let slip recently; and could look Helo full in the face.

“I hope you guys have a good time, really.”

“Look after yourself, Lee,” Helo said softly and he raised his hand and waved at Lee before walking out of the door; while Lee tried unsuccessfully to pretend he didn’t give a shit about the condescending _asshole_ and went back to his situps.

******************************* 

Six weeks later, Lee still had no news from _Galactica_ , but that was fast becoming the least of his problems as he waited outside Colonel Gamalian’s office for a meeting he would most likely leave as a civilian.

The door buzzed open. The Colonel was at her desk, head bowed over a file that looked suspiciously thick if it was Lee’s.

“Come in,” she said without looking at Lee as he stepped into the office and saluted sharply.

“So, Apollo. Seems like only yesterday you were last here. I wasn’t expecting a repeat visit so soon.”

Last time had involved a serious dressing-down and a warning that may have been final, if he didn’t get his act together. Funny how that had slipped his mind until today.

“At ease.”

Now he was closer, Lee could see that the file she was staring at was definitely his. He noted with a sinking feeling that there were a lot of annotations to each entry. He relaxed his posture slightly and clasped his hands behind his back, bracing himself for the onslaught.

Colonel Gamalian raised her head and gave him a cold stare that made his stomach turn.

“Lieutenant, I won’t beat around the bush. When you joined us, I was prepared to give you some leeway, considering the circumstances of your transfer. But it seems that time goes by and your attitude fails to improve. On the contrary, according to this,” she nodded at the file before her, “Your disregard for military discipline has reached the point where I might legitimately ask you whether you intend to resign your commission in the near future, or whether I should take that decision for you. Am I making myself clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

Lee kept his eyes focused on the air to the left of her head, breathing evenly.

“I’d ask you for an explanation, but I can’t imagine you’d have anything to say that would exonerate your behavior. So tell me, Apollo, why should I trust you with my birds when your record shows you’ve been thrown in hack twice – no, scratch that, _three_ times – since I last saw you.”

_Focus. Answer the question._

“Because I’m the best pilot you have, sir, and you need people like me to test those Vipers to their limits.”

Gamalian smiled thinly, which was a first for Lee. She wasn’t reputed for having much of a sense of humor.

“I’ll grant you that. But you know as well as I do that discipline and the ability to follow orders is an essential part of life in the military.”

“Yes, sir, I’m aware of that. I think you’ll find that I usually get sent to the brig on my spare time, not because I frak up on duty, sir.”

He was skating on thin ice, but he was telling the truth.

On duty, Lee still knew to keep to the straight and narrow, or near enough to pass muster. A little mouthy, maybe, when answering a superior officer, and he’d perfected the art of obeying orders while projecting a devil-may-care attitude; but he obeyed them, and delivered what was expected. In retrospect, he’d learned a lot from Starbuck’s insolence, even if – by the sound of it – she had turned over a new leaf since then.

“Yes, Lieutenant, that has been duly noted. Which is why you’re here instead of handing in your dogtags on your way out.”

She raised her eyes from the folder and appraised him coolly, taking in the fading bruises on his jaw and the healed cut on his temple. Lee tried to ignore the eyes on him; to pretend she was just another woman checking out his physique and not his CO deciding whether he ought to be drummed out of the service or deserved another chance.

“As it happens, you’re an extremely lucky man, Apollo. That is, if you’re still interested in flying some of those Vipers you mentioned rather than looking for a new job.”

“Sir?”

“You might be exactly the pilot that we need at this point, so if I were you I’d pay close attention to what I’m about to tell you. Keep in mind that it is strictly confidential. Highly sensitive information, not to be spread beyond these walls, regardless of security clearance. I assume you can be trusted with this despite your… questionable disciplinary record.”

“Sir, yes sir,” he said automatically.

Gamalian’s tone brooked no argument. She had a reputation as an officer who’d had the balls to make tough choices, not least when she’d crushed the Sagittaron mutiny on _Hephaistos_ eight years earlier. Lee respected the hell out of her for that, and had no intention of pissing her off. What he’d told Kara after Zak died still held true – he might no longer want to be Daddy’s golden boy (not that he ever was, really, except in the eyes of those who didn’t know him) – but he wasn’t ready to relinquish the adrenaline rush and the sheer joy of flying Vipers.

“I understand you volunteered for some deep space testing of the new Vipers, which will make it easier if you accept this mission. We need – _I_ need – an experienced and reliable pilot willing to undertake a reconnaissance mission on some installations run by Tauron colonists outside our system.”

“Outsystem, sir?”

“The asteroid belt around Zephyr. It’s only a few light years away, just far enough however that it has escaped our notice, until recently, that the Taurons have set up some more illegal mining operations.”

Lee raised an eyebrow.

“Tylium?”

Tauron’s willingness to bypass federal taxes by establishing its own tylium mines had been a source of friction in the past, with at least one Energy Secretary forced to resign as a result. The Fleet was always on the lookout for rogue Colonial outposts in the minerals and metal-rich asteroid fields of nearby stars.

“Actually, we’ve been getting reports mentioning uranium. Possible enrichment. You’ll appreciate why the utmost discretion is required.”

“You think the Taurons are building _nukes_?”

 _Frak_. Colonial controls on nukes were tight, and with good reason. It was a central tenet of the Articles of Colonization that weapons of mass destruction were only produced and maintained at the federal level – and that what protection was offered to the Twelve Colonies was always in the hands of the Colonial Fleet rather than any planetary defense systems.

“In a nutshell, yes. You know Taurons have been flexing their muscle. I don’t know how closely you follow Colonial politics, Lieutenant, but times are uncertain. Zarek’s followers in Sagittaron are regrouping; there are threats of religious riots in Geminon and the upcoming Quorum elections are encouraging firebrand campaigners left, right and center across the Colonies. Frankly, the last thing we need right now is another flashpoint.”

“But if they are building nukes, we have to stop them. Sir.”

“If they are, yes, obviously we’ll have to step in. But the intelligence we have is sketchy, and we need more before we send in the big guns. Without going into all the details, you can imagine the political repercussions if we got it wrong. Tauron is a powerful voice in the Quorum of Twelve. It’s going to be messy enough if we get it right.”

“And this would be where I come in?”

“Yes, Apollo, that’s exactly where you come in. We need you to fly a secret recon mission – stealth ops, if you will – and provide us with some evidence about this facility. It’s a dangerous mission, and we’re looking for a volunteer.”

 _Volunteer my ass._ As if he had a choice. But the proposed mission sounded exciting, and possibly dangerous, which was infinitely more alluring than the prospect of doing Viper maintenance for the foreseeable.

“I’d be honored, sir.”

“Take a seat.”

There was another, much thinner, file on the table, which Gamalian pushed towards Lee. It contained the specs for a stealth ship that looked different to the standard Stealthstar.

“You want me to fly this, sir?”

“Take a good look at it. It’s the new prototype Stealthstar 7800. Parts of it are based on the Viper, like most of the commands and the maneuverability, but unlike previous models it has limited FTL capacity. And of course a full recon array.”

Lee nodded as he read through and memorized the essential data.

“You shouldn’t have any trouble flying it or operating most of the equipment – I understand that you spent three months training for recon and undercover ops at the end of your final year at the Academy.”

“Is that why I’m here, sir?”

He’d been wondering why she picked him, of all people.

“Partly, although of course there are pilots with more recon experience. What we have here is a rare case of our mutual needs meeting at the halfway point. I need a pilot who’s good enough to fly a recon mission in the middle of an asteroid field using a prototype ship. You hit all those buttons. You might be a frak-up when it comes to discipline, but you can fly a Viper better than anyone here, and I need a pilot of your caliber for this.”

 _Oh gods, she might as well have been describing Starbuck,_ he thought.

“I also need someone who’s willing to take extreme risks, Lieutenant, and I don’t just mean the kind of risks involved in flying a ship through debris without DRADIS. It’s unclear whether the Taurons involved in this operation are working with the authorities, or whether they’re an independent faction. If it’s the latter, there no telling how far they’d be willing to go if they discovered the nature of your mission.”

“You think they’d kill me.”

It wasn’t a question.

“It’s an eventuality we have considered, yes.”

Lee closed his eyes briefly, testing out how that felt. Death was always a possibility – and not that remote – for a Viper pilot, even in peacetime. Flying was dangerous business. This, though, was different.

He opened his eyes again, gazed steadily into Gamalian’s dark ones.

“Obviously, you believe I’d be willing to take those risks.”

“Yes. Am I wrong?”

He grinned.

“No.”

“So, Apollo, are you volunteering for this mission?”

“Do I have a choice, sir?”

The look she gave him was searching, and weary, and made Lee cringe at his insolent tone.

“It depends what you mean by choice. It’s a volunteer mission, yes, but it would certainly improve your chances of staying here if you took it. Assuming you survive.”

Obviously, she had come to the conclusion that Lee was going to say yes, because there was a hint of levity in her tone that had been conspicuously absent earlier.

“Permission to speak freely?”

“Granted.”

“What makes you think you can trust me with such a sensitive mission? A moment ago you were telling me I was borderline unfit for the military.”

“You still have supporters in the Fleet, believe it or not.”

Frak. Frak. It had to be his father, and the thought of it made him want to puke.

“My father vouched for me? You’re kidding me, right?”

“Hardly. And he’s not the only one. I’ve watched you, Apollo. I believe that when you took the oath of allegiance, and vowed to protect the Articles with your life, you meant it. And that’s exactly what this mission is about.”

Lee said nothing, just looked at her, waiting for her to finish her pitch. He already knew what his answer would be.

“We’ve been at peace a long time,” she said, grim, “and some people have forgotten why the federal republic came into existence in the first place. The Articles of Colonization are worth fighting for; dying for, if necessary. And yes, if this proves to be what we fear, I would not hesitate to call it an act of treason.”

“Count me in.”

Maybe it was a second chance, a form of redemption, but the bottom line was that she was right – Lee _was_ willing to risk his life to defend the federation, and that hadn’t changed after Zak had died. It didn’t matter that he was fulfilling his father’s expectations because they were just as much his.

He had no intention of buying into the whole package again, but for this mission, he really was on board.

***************************************

Flying the spy ship _Argus_ was almost exactly like flying a regular Viper, except with a little more legroom and the priceless added bonus of a short-range FTL drive. The first time Lee climbed into the cockpit and took it for a spin, it was like being a kid again. It had been a while since he’d spent some serious time in deep space, and it surprised him how much it felt like home.

The asteroid belt was another matter. If the Taurons were indeed mining for uranium, they could not have picked a better place to hide – a densely packed asteroid field, with enough ambient radiation to disable most long distance scanners, and disrupt DRADIS. Guiding a ship through it was terrifying, and exhilarating, and possibly the hardest test of his flying skills he’d ever faced. But it also meant that Lee was virtually invisible, and untraceable even if he were ever to be spotted.

Alone at the commands of his ship, finding pathways through the chaos, he let himself enjoy the ride, shadowing larger rocks, swooping like a bird to dodge incoming fragments, and relying on eyeball mark one and hair-trigger pilot reflexes to keep him from crashing.

He hadn’t felt that alive in months.

It took him three days of dedicated spying to establish that the Colonel’s fears were well-founded – the rock on which the mining facility was based had negligible resources of tylium, and enough uranium to fuel a power station, or make a small arsenal. Between the photos he took of the installations and the radiation scans he made of the cargo ships docking on the asteroid, he was convinced there was uranium enrichment taking place.

He could kid himself that the Taurons were just doing this to fuel their nuclear power stations, or boost their planetary defenses, but he knew it was bullshit. At least six of the ships whose details he’d fed back to his base, the nominally civilian cargo ship _Aulis_ , had distinctly shady backgrounds; and there were names on their manifests that had made Gamalian twitchy. This was nuclear contraband in action, and it had to be stopped.

On the fourth day, Fleet HQ ordered an end to his recon flights, and recalled _Aulis_ to Picon in preparation for a full-scale military operation to take the facility over.

Lee’s mission had been an unqualified success.

A couple of weeks later, he celebrated the anniversary of Zak’s death by requesting a transfer to a battlestar, any battlestar (he knew the chances of getting posted under his father’s command were nil, so he was safe), banking on his newly-minted status with the top brass to smooth over his obvious deficiencies on the discipline front.

He craved more deep space, more _real_ action, more solitude; just him and his ship and the stars in the endless night around him. He knew that what he’d likely get was more enclosed spaces; routine patrols; and the total lack of privacy that came with ship life; but providing he got some regular time with his bird in space, it would be worth it. And he wanted, _needed_ , to get off Picon, to go somewhere where he had no memories of anyone, and nobody knew him or expected anything of him.

They gave him what he asked for, but it didn’t quite match his expectations. No matter where he went, it turned out that people saw an Adama first, and Lee second, if at all, and he had to face a whole different set of assumptions and expectations.

But it was a change, and there were no memories of Zak – or Kara – to trouble him, so he counted moving to _Phoenicia_ as a definite step in the right direction.


	2. Phoenicia (Adrift)

“Apollo, the CAG wants you in his office RFN, so get your skates on,” a voice shouted through the hatch. 

Lee bit off a snarky reply – the voice belonged to Captain Stratos, who positively enjoyed pulling rank on uppity pilots – and Lee had already seen the inside of _Phoenicia_ ’s brig in the ten days he’d been on board. If he kept rising to the bait, they might as well move his stuff there, because there was no shortage of assholes looking to rub him up the wrong way. Casual references to daddy’s boys and questions about how it felt to be following in the Commander’s footsteps had already led to a couple of heated encounters – one of which had landed both him and his attacker in hack for a day.

He pulled on his uniform jacket and started buttoning it as he made his way towards the CAG’s office.

Captain O’Brien – Rulebook – was working his way through a pile of rosters, a weary look on his face, and when Lee knocked on the side of the open hatch, he sighed and waved him in. 

“Apollo, looks like I might need your expertise. We spent a week getting patched up on Scorpia before you joined us, and the Admiralty in its infinite wisdom saw fit to equip us with a few of the new Mark VIIs. I understand you’re familiar with them so I would appreciate it if you took the pilots through the basics, you know – specs, differences with the current model, basic handling – all that stuff.”

“You want me to train the other pilots to fly them?” Lee asked, disbelieving. “Sir?”

“Yes. And if you want to pull together a crib sheet while you’re at it, don’t let me stop you.”

Lee sighed. This was an opportunity, but also a guaranteed source of friction with his fellow pilots, something he certainly didn’t need.

“Sir, I’m not sure I’m best suited to do this.”

O’Brien looked at him coldly.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Apollo, but you are the resident expert on the new Vipers, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am. But I’m also new here.”

“Then just do it. If anyone has a problem with it, send them to me. I’m not in the business of massaging egos. You have the skills, you do the job. I’ll announce it in the afternoon briefing. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.”

But as he walked out toward the rec room, Lee couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just been handed a poisoned chalice. 

At the 1400 briefing, he abandoned his usual back row shelter and sat in front, conscious that he had to look eager for his assignment – even if the truth was that he hated it already. He only had to glance around him to see his colleagues bristling when O’Brien announced his new responsibilities. 

“You have four weeks to get used to the new ships. The new Mark VII is already being deployed throughout the Fleet, and we’ll be getting some at the next refit, so you better pay attention to what Lieutenant Adama has to say.” 

It reminded Lee of school, where being singled out by the teacher for praise meant being challenged to a fight on the way home. He had never backed down, even if it took months before he managed to defeat one of the frakking bullies. After that, it became easier.

Here, it was going to be quicker and dirtier, but then Lee already knew how to fight back, and win. He caught O’Brien’s questioning glance and stood up, turning to address the assembly.

“Flight deck, 1600. I’ll introduce you to the birds.”

One of the pilots sprawled in the third row blew a kiss at him and laughed silently, while the guy next to her scowled. Lee smiled back and swore to himself he wasn’t going to let this situation get out of hand. He spent the next two hours planning how best to entice hostile pilots to follow his lead, and trying to draft some bullet points for O’Brien to look over.

At 15.58, the main hangar deck was empty and Lee’s palms were sweating, no matter how much he told himself he didn’t give a frak about popularity contests with the other pilots. 

At 16.01, six pilots turned up, one of them a short brunette with mischievous eyes – Dancer, if he remembered well – who spent the next half-hour smiling at Lee and taking notes on a small pad. The other five were surly, but when he marched them around to the new ships, the atmosphere markedly changed. Viper junkies to a man – or, indeed, woman – they couldn’t pretend not to care. The rest of the afternoon went more smoothly, and Lee started to consider the pros and cons of breaking frat regs, seeing as Dancer didn’t stop making eyes at him all the way through. 

Later that evening, he was in the rec room reading a magazine when another pilot, a lanky redhead, whose name and callsign Lee had forgotten – if he’d ever known them –asked him if he wanted to play triad. Dancer was already at the table, and Lee let himself fantasize about what would happen if he took her up on her unspoken offer. 

The next couple of hours passed in a pleasing blur of good cards, beer and increasingly heated glances, until he figured he’d won as much as he ought to for his first game with a new crew and pushed back his chair. Dancer had lost three big hands in a row, her cheeks were flushed, and she looked sexy enough for Lee to want to march her to the nearest bunk and frak her thoroughly. He looked meaningfully at her and then got up slowly. 

“I’m beat, guys. Sweet dreams.” 

A couple of pilots nodded at him as he walked out, and he congratulated himself on leaving before his lucky streak got anyone pissed. He needed all the goodwill he could get on this ship.

He was barely a few steps down the hallway when she appeared at his side and twined an arm around his waist before dragging him along to an unmarked hatch. Looked like frat regs were definitely on the way out. 

“Do you have a minute, Apollo?” she whispered conspiratorially against his shoulder and when he nodded, she spun the wheel and opened the hatch. 

They stepped through into a small room, hardly more than a space between bulkheads, in which someone had seen fit to store crates of tools and coveralls.

“Engineering locker?” Lee whispered back with a grin as she carefully dogged the hatch.

Dancer grinned and laced her hands around his neck. 

“Got to make your own privacy on a battlestar, flyboy.”

Lee wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, angling his hips so he could press himself against her while he dipped his head and nuzzled her neck. She smelled good – a sweet spicy scent of perfume and warm skin and the slightest hint of sweat – and he felt himself harden. Dancer pushed back against his stiffening cock, and let out a giggle that turned into a moan when he opened his mouth against her skin and sucked at the juncture between neck and shoulder.

She shuddered and let her head drop back, which he took as an invitation to lick his way down her cleavage before kissing his way back up to her mouth. He hovered for a moment over her parted lips, prolonging the anticipation as her breath became shorter, and when they kissed the rush made him giddy with hormones and want. 

“Aaah, frak, Apollo,” she moaned, and he felt sparks run up his spine as the prospect of sex grew closer. Her hands were already busy at his waist, pushing up his tanks and burrowing under, cool fingers on his heated skin tracing feverish patterns that had him panting like a dog at high noon. He retaliated in kind, attacking her waistband and efficiently unbuttoning her fatigues, one hand slipping into her pants and cupping her sex until she squirmed and parted her legs to allow him better access. 

“Lords, Dancer, you’re…”

“It’s Corinna,” she interrupted, her voice unsteady, and he smiled.

“Lee.”

“Oh, I know who _you_ are, Lieutenant Adama,” she said with a giggle, grinding herself into his hand, and for a second he wished she hadn’t mentioned his surname, but the slick wetness of her through her panties was enough to make up for it. 

He pulled the underwear aside and fingered her slowly, watching as she screwed her face up in anticipation of release, and when he figured she was close, unfastened his pants with his free hand and teased her with his erection, rubbing it against her hot wet cunt. Gods she felt good, and he wanted _in_.

“Wanna frak you, please baby,” he whispered in her ear, pleading. She nodded and he took his fingers out and replaced them with his achingly hard cock, sliding into her with a sigh. She was light enough that he could pick her up and frak her against the wall, slow and deep, and it only took a few strokes before she came and clenched around him with a sigh and a string of half-muttered curses, egging him onto his own climax as hers ebbed. 

They stayed holed up in the locker for a few minutes, braced against the wall; half-naked and panting like a pair of teenagers overcome by their hormones. That seemed to be par for the course here, from what Lee had seen over the past few days. The claustrophobic nature of battlestars, combined with the adrenaline rush of deep space flight missions and the unisex promiscuity of pilot quarters, fuelled a sexually charged atmosphere. With the extra testosterone packed by most pilots – male and female – it obviously translated into a degree of rule bending, and a few quick fraks in out of the way areas. 

At least he felt like he was part of the crew now.

***************************

Sleeping with Dancer – Corinna – except he rarely called her that, even when they were frakking, turned out to be mixed blessing. Good, because she was a wildcat whose sex drive matched his, and the gods knew he needed release. Bad, because unlike his usual love’em and leave’em M.O., Lee found himself reluctantly drawn into something that was a lot closer to an actual relationship than he had originally envisaged. 

Also – and it didn’t surprise him in the slightest, seeing as Dancer had been on _Phoenicia_ for two years and clearly liked to fool around – he realized that their little thing wasn’t quite as far under the radar as he’d have liked. There were at least a couple of pilots whose behavior had become markedly more hostile in the past couple of weeks, and Lee could only attribute it to the fact that they knew – or had guessed – something about the affair. Discretion was always a challenge in the close quarters of a warship. 

Things came to a head one evening in the rec room when Lee had drunk enough to let his guard down, and his triad game was on fire. Dancer had blown him earlier in his rack – a risky move, but he was pretty sure they hadn’t been detected – and he was riding high on sexual satisfaction, booze, and a spell of luck that almost led him to thank Hermes for his bounty, atheism be damned. 

Suddenly the pilot across from him – Trickster, a hatchet-faced man with an angry stare – slapped his cards down and stood up. 

“The frak if I’m going to sit here and be cheated out of my pay by a newbie,” he swore. 

Lee’s hackles rose immediately. Trickster had been goading him for a few days, and judging by the hungry looks he gave Dancer when she wasn’t looking at him, it was altogether possible that he was one of her earlier conquests, and resented having lost her favors.

“I may be hearing things, but it sounds like you just called me a cheat,” Lee said, tipping his chair back slightly and stretching. “I assume you’re just being a sore loser.”

Trickster leaned across the table towards him and scowled. 

“Frak you, Apollo. You’ve been here what, a month? You think because your daddy’s a battlestar commander you can swan around here and run the show, cheat at cards and behave like the cock of the walk?”

There were flecks of spittle on the corners of his lips, and his eyes were bloodshot. Even through the haze of his own drunkenness, Lee could tell that Trickster was really wasted, and desperate to egg him into a fight. Lee had avoided getting drawn into any serious confrontations since his first few days on board, but he was drunk enough that he didn’t care anymore, and his desire to blow all his frustrations away in a bloody punch-up overrode his sentient brain. He shoved his chair back and stood up to the frakker, who had half a head on him.

“You got something to back up that mouth of yours?” he said with a smile, his hands already balled into fists at his side. He could sense the blood pulsing through his veins, the rapid drumming of his heart. He felt alive, and angry, and itching for a fight. 

Trickster’s first punch was a clumsy thrust over the table which made him overbalance and sprawl across the cards, tumbling to the ground with a crash in front of Lee, who kicked him halfheartedly. 

“Get the frak up, Trick. If you can hold your booze, that is.”

Trick apparently could hold it, up to a point, because he didn’t miss the next punch, and Lee’s complacency dropped a notch when it connected with his midriff. He fired back immediately, clocking his opponent’s jaw and sending him staggering back. They traded a few more punches, Lee’s landing harder – and missing less often – than Trickster’s. It took all of five minutes before Lee saw a real opening and whacked Trickster full on the chin, knocking him to the ground. 

He stood there breathing hard, clenching and unclenching his hands, knuckles red and sore, and he knew that it was worth spending another night in hack just for the euphoria he was feeling now. Trickster had the reputation of being a hard nut, and his defeat meant Lee wouldn’t be getting much more trouble, if he’d read the cards right.

He didn’t resist when the two Marines turned up with Stratos to take him to the brig. Rest was just what he needed, and the cell bunk wasn’t much harder than his regular rack, if a little narrower. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the thin foam pillow, and dreamt of flying into the vast endless dark of space, distant stars and nebulas twinkling through his canopy. In retrospect, it was one of the best night’s sleep he’d had in months. 

 

********************************************

 

The morning after the showdown, Dancer ambushed Lee on his release with some pretty spectacular sexual pyrotechnics in the pilot’s head (the showers were one place where most people turned a blind eye to sexual shenanigans, solo or otherwise). His evident willingness – and ability – to use his fists also granted him some respite from the other pilots. 

Still, it wasn’t until a couple of months later that he really earned the respect of his peers. 

It started off as a routine supply run to _Hecate_ station, one of the dozen or so observation stations dotted along the nearer reaches of the Armistice Line to monitor any evidence of Cylon activity since the end of the war. As far as Lee knew, there had been nothing to report in the past four decades; he was also aware that, had anything been sighted, chances were he’d be no wiser. Few civilians outside of a handful of senior politicians even knew about the stations’ existence; and even among the military, the information was spread on a need-to-know basis.

Secrecy and security constraints ruled out civilian ships from supplying the stations, which relied on infrequent contact with nearby battlestars for most of their requirements. Like most military vessels who patrolled the Armistice Line, _Phoenicia_ carried extra supplies for that purpose, so when the call came that _Hecate_ was running low on fuel and meds, a small convoy of Raptors escorting a tanker bird was assembled and a few pilots drawn from the duty roster. 

To his surprise, Lee was flagged to pilot the lead Raptor, effectively heading the mission. O’Brien was characteristically blunt. Supply runs weren’t popular assignments, and besides, most of the senior pilots were wrapped up in a tactical exercise at which Lee’s presence was not essential. 

“You’ve also got high security clearance, and that makes you an easy pick. _Hecate_ ’s commander is paranoid about secrecy. Keep on his good side, lieutenant.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Axel Shaw isn’t someone you want to frak with, and he runs a tight ship. Or station, as the case may be. He’s even more suspicious about the Cylons’ plans than your old man, and that’s saying something.”

Lee blinked. 

“You know my father, sir?”

“I don’t need to know your father to know what he thinks about toasters, Apollo. He doesn’t shy away from sharing his opinions. But for what it’s worth, yes, I know him. And Shaw’s worse than he is.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Lee said, a little disconcerted by their exchange. “So, is Commander Shaw related to Quorum Delegate Marta Shaw, or is it a coincidence?”

O’Brien smiled. 

“They used to be married before she went into politics. Not the happiest of unions, I believe. Delegate Shaw is a remarkable woman, though.”

“I voted for her at the last elections,” Lee said. “But I guess I shouldn’t mention it to Commander Shaw.” 

The CAG snorted and shook his head. “You have your orders, Lieutenant – what you do with the advice I gave you is your own business.”

*************************

The flight to _Hecate_ was uneventful; but the refueling turned out to be a much more complicated job than Lee had expected. For some reason, all the automated landing systems were off-line; and even the guidance systems that would be used to sync the tanker with the station were manually operated. The maneuver shouldn’t have been beyond the abilities of an experienced pilot; but Lee realized on the third try that Shady was way too nervous, and had obviously never done a fully manual refuel outside a simulator. His responses to the LSO’s instructions sounded less and less assured in Lee’s helmet as he hovered his raptor near the station’s fuel tanks.

“Steady, Shady, or you’ll get the fuel lines tangled,” Lee urged. “Correct your angle, you’re coming in too close… Redress now!” 

Frak. Shady was, if anything, getting worse. Any minute now and he’d scrape the side of the tanker against the station, or rupture one of the lines. 

“Shady, do you copy? Redress your approach vector _now_. You’re headed for a collision.”

There was a burst of static in his ear, but the ship continued to veer towards the station. Lee felt his palms starting to sweat inside his gloves. This was turning into a disaster. 

The LSO cut into Lee’s comm, his tone dry. 

“Tanker 909-er, this is _Hecate_ ’s LSO, demanding instant course correction to avoid collision, do you respond?”

The comm stayed silent. 

The LSO’s voice took on a more urgent tone. 

“Lieutenant Adama, it seems your tanker is out of control. I suggest you find a way to avoid a collision or Commander Shaw will be forced to take defensive action to avoid damaging the station.”

There was no mistaking his meaning. Shady might be a shoddy tanker pilot, but he didn’t deserve to be blown up. Lee forced himself to concentrate. He had to find another way. 

“Sir, yes, sir. How much time do I have?”

Already he could see the station’s cannons pivoting towards the tanker. 

“Approximately one minute, Lieutenant, before we have to act.”

It wasn’t enough to calculate anything – angles, vectors, distances – but it was probably just long enough for Lee’s Raptor to insert himself between the tanker and the station, in the rapidly closing gap, to match the ships’ speeds, and try to nudge the tanker out of its current course. Of course, if he failed, it meant he’d be blown up, too, or crushed. 

No time to weigh the odds. Lee gripped the controls, spun his ship around and ducked under the runaway tanker, estimating as best he could the other ship’s direction and speed, and – agonizingly slowly, one eye on the seconds ticking down on his ship’s clock – started edging towards the tanker. He had to do this precisely – too hard and he’d either crash his bird or send the tanker into some unpredictable direction; too soft and it wouldn’t veer from the collision course. 

The hulls made contact with a grinding noise, the shock jarring his bones, but Lee was confident that he hadn’t damaged the Raptor – or not much anyhow. He turned his thrusters to maximum and angled the ship against the tanker. If he’d gotten it wrong, he’d find out in ten seconds, and then his troubles would be over either way. He had a brief thought for his mother – who probably wouldn’t survive the blow of losing another son to the Fleet – and another, briefer, thought for his father. Kara would have to stand in for both his sons if…

He looked at his instrument panel and noticed the current approach was slowly shifting away from the station. Perhaps not fast enough, but maybe Shaw would stay his hand on the trigger and give it a chance. 

“This _Hecate_ actual, Lieutenant. Standing down our defenses. We’re sending a boarding crew to regain control of your tanker.”

“Permission to join in the boarding, sir.”

“Granted, Lieutenant.”

*****************

They boarded the tanker with a station Raptor and had to cut their way through the hull. The crew was fully suited up, and the atmospheric readings inside the tanker weren’t promising – the level of oxygen was lower than normal, and kept fluctuating as they neared the bridge.

The marine at the head of the boarding party turned to Lee as they approached the closed hatch. 

“Oxygen levels are dropping, sir, but the pressure’s holding. Doesn’t seem to be a hull breach. Could be a malfunction in life support.”

“Let’s open the hatch,” Lee replied. He dug his hand into a side pocket, checking for his medkit. If Shady was still alive, he’d need urgent intervention.

The bridge appeared deserted at first, then he spotted the pilot’s form slumped on the floor, unconscious. The lead marine dropped to Shady’s side and checked his pulse. Lee tossed him the medkit, noting with relief that the marine immediately opened it to administer first aid. The controls appeared to be working normally, and Lee strapped himself into the pilot seat. The tanker felt like a cow compared to the Raptor he’d just been piloting, let alone to the Vipers he was used to flying, but he adjusted his grip and felt it respond. He set the ship on a steady course and opened a channel to _Hecate_.

“Lieutenant Adama to _Hecate_ actual – we have control of the tanker, sir.”

“Glad to hear it, Lieutenant. What’s the situation on board?”

“Looks like the life support system failed, sir – we’ll need to make further checks. Please inform sickbay we’ll be sending our pilot in – he’s alive but knocked out.”

“Duly noted, Lieutenant. I trust when your checks are done, you’ll be taking over the helm for the refuel.”

Lee smiled grimly to himself. Shaw certainly didn’t believe in wasting time.

“Of course, sir. As soon as the ship checks out.”

The life support malfunction was traced to a couple of defective sensors that had actually been reported before, Lee noticed in the log. It would probably seal the fate of _Phoenicia_ ’s deck chief, who already had a couple of black marks to his name; almost losing a tanker and a pilot through sheer negligence was likely to get him demoted, a move well overdue in Lee’s eyes. There wouldn’t be many tears shed for Castris among the other pilots, either. 

The rest of the mission passed uneventfully. Once Shady had been taken off the tanker, there was nothing to stop Lee completing the refuel, and he found he rather enjoyed the challenge of doing it entirely on manual. Once it was over, he carefully docked the tanker alongside _Hecate_ and requested permission to come aboard.

Once through the airlock, he was startled by the size of the welcoming party awaiting him on the deck. It looked like most of _Hecate_ ’s command crew was there, including the CO, a ramrod-straight man with piercing black eyes and gray hair who snapped a textbook salute, followed by all the other officers.

Lee saluted back, his heart pounding. As the adrenaline subsided and he stepped out of focused pilot mode, the reality of what he’d been through was hitting him. Apparently, the people on the station had already figured that one out. 

“Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Adama,” Shaw said, extending a hand. “And congratulations for your audacious maneuver, which saved your crewmate and your tanker.”

“Thank you, sir. I was just doing my duty.”

Shaw smiled. Behind him, Lee caught a couple of officers who appeared genuinely impressed; but whether it was by what he’d just achieved, or by the compliment from their CO, he couldn’t tell. 

“I’ll make sure your Commander is aware of your bravery. Not to mention your skill – I don’t know many pilots who could have handled this like you did.”

Nor, apparently, did the rest of the _Phoenicia_ pilots, who insisted on toasting him that evening in the rec room, along with most of the station’s off-duty flyboys. Shady was propped in a corner, having recovered from his near-asphyxiation. He was clutching a beer, which he raised to Lee’s health at every opportunity. 

“Apollo, anything you want, any time – you just ask. My firstborn, my porn stash, sexual favors – you name it.”

“I might come back to you on that but I think your virtue’s safe for now. I’ll have a beer, though, if you insist.”

As he sipped his beer, it occurred to Lee that perhaps this manual docking business had something to do with what O’Brien had told him about the Commander’s distrust of the Cylons.

Maybe this wasn’t accidental at all. Maybe they ran their station approaches on manual on purpose. A thought worth pondering, because it brought into sharp relief how dependent they were on automated piloting systems in the fleet, especially when it came to docking ships or landing on battlestars.

He leaned over towards Shady. 

“You ever think that the systems weren’t down by accident today?”

“Eh? You think they do this on purpose?”

“I think it’s something to do with technology. The CO has toaster anxiety, or so I’ve heard.”

“Frakkers!” Shady spat out. “You’d think they’d let visitors know, no?”

Lee shrugged. “Kind of the point not to, I guess.”

One of _Hecate_ ’s pilots, a young kid with a mop of blonde hair who went by the callsign Ripples, had obviously overheard their exchange. He lurched towards them and sat heavily at their table. 

“S’not an accident, no. CO doesn’t trust networked systems. Says it makes us too vulnerable to a Cylon attack. Frakking annoying at first, but you get used to it.”

“Glad you think so, kid. Wasn’t your ass that nearly got vaporized into space!”

“Hey – just telling you as it is, man. Sorry you had to go through this – you’re lucky this guy’s a crazy-ass flyboy, though,” Ripples shot back, raising his hands in mock surrender, and turned to Lee. “Seriously, sir? That was an awesome piece of flying out there.”

“Hell yeah!” another pilot – one of Lee’s shipmates – called across the rec room. “A toast to the LT!”

His call was answered with an approving roar and a dozen raised glasses and Lee tried to stop himself grinning, with little success. 

Later, when he was drunk and tired and about to climb into his rack, Shady tripped over the hatch as he came into the duty locker and fell against him.

“Frak – are you okay?” Lee asked, steadying him with one arm. 

Shady swayed slightly and clutched at the nearest bulkhead.

“I’m gonna be fine, thanks. Just need some rack time. A lot of rack time.”

“That’s cool – we’re not expected back until late tomorrow. Catch as much sleep as you can.”

“Hey, Apollo, thanks again for saving my ass. I would have been a goner out there…”

A hand landed on Lee’s arm and he found himself pulled into an unsteady hug, accompanied by whistles and catcalls from the other pilots already in their racks. 

“Shady, I told you I wasn’t interested in the sexual favors,” Lee said, trying to disengage himself.

“Frak that, man. I just want to say thanks. That frakked-up Commander Shaw nearly had my skin, and you saved it. Don’t know why the asshole is so scared of Cylons, but…” 

Lee managed to pull out of the embrace. “Just the way he is, I guess.”

Shady pulled himself onto his rack, knuckles white on the ladder as he struggled with his balance. When he’d managed to hoist himself onto it, he sat down heavily and rubbed his face. 

“Your old man’s kind of hard on toasters too, isn’t he?”

“For frak’s sake, not you as well,” Lee complained. “What is it about my father and you guys?”

“Well, you know, he did that thing on _Phoenicia_ a couple years back.”

“That _thing_?”

“You know, the war games we did with the 75; Commander Adama joined us for some ops, worked with a group of pilots, organizing a rescue mission. It was successful. Your father’s a good tactician.” 

Lee stared at him. “No, I don’t know. Had no idea. Who was in it?”

“Er, lemme think… Slackface, Trapper, me obviously, Escobar, Jackson – except he quit before you came on board, I guess… Oh, and O’Brien, of course. Just before he made CAG. Nobody told you?”

“Hey, what about me?” one of the junior pilots called from the other side of the bunkroom. “I was part of the winning team too.”

Frak. _Frak._ No frakking wonder O’Brien was quoting his dad to his face, Lee thought bitterly. And he hadn’t had the decency to mention anything to him the last time they met. He probably already knew Lee as the black sheep of the family. 

“No. But I guess I can see where the daddy’s boy comments come from.”

Shady laughed. “Apollo, with a name like Adama you’d have gotten that shit anyway. But I can guarantee you’ll be getting less of it when we get back to _Phoenicia_.” 

******************************

Shady wasn’t wrong. The news of Lee’s daring rescue; the fact he’d put his life on the line for a fellow pilot – and a well-liked one at that – and the rare praise from hardass Commander Shaw all conspired to give him a reputation that erased any and all past indignities. 

Suddenly Lee found himself surfing a new wave of popularity. Whenever he walked into the briefing room, someone or other would give him a thumbs-up or a random backslap; he was invited to frequent triad games, and included in all the rounds of drinks; and his appeal to female colleagues ratcheted up a notch. He still slept with Corinna regularly, but it didn’t stop him flirting with some of the other pilots, and occasionally going further. 

For the first time in a long time, he felt like he belonged on the ship, that perhaps _Phoenicia_ was home after all, and not just a random way station in his chaotic post-Zak life. 

It probably wasn’t going to last, he reasoned, but that didn’t stop him enjoying the opportunities when they offered themselves, and life for the next few months was better than he’d ever have expected. It was almost enough to make him think twice about giving up on a serious military career. Almost. 

When the news came through that _Galactica_ was about to be decommissioned, halfway through a complex war games exercise at which Lee was acting as tactical officer and juggling a heinous set of variables, he didn’t really have time to ponder what that meant. Later, he found himself musing about Kara and Helo, wondering whether they were still be posted together, and determinedly not thinking about his father on the cusp of hanging up his wings for good. 

The request to attend the ceremony, on the other hand, was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. Why his dad wanted him present when they hadn’t spoken in years, and last traded words in anger, Lee couldn’t fathom. All he knew is that Commander Jephson had given him a few days’ furlough even though he hadn’t requested them, and it looked pretty damn impossible not to turn up. 

_Phoenicia_ ’s tour of duty on the Armistice Line had ended, and the ship was back insystem for an upgrade – and a shipment of new Vipers – at Scorpia docks. Lee was granted the use of one of the new Mark VIIs for his trip, which sweetened the pill a little. He liked the maneuverability and speed of the new ships; he’d just wished the occasion hadn’t been such a chore.


	3. Galactica (Return of the Prodigal Son)

The bulk of _Galactica_ loomed in the inky darkness in front of him, a great ugly beast bearing the scars of ancient battles from the Cylon war, its fabric worn and pitted by years of exposure to radiation and space debris; all in all a fitting ship for its grizzled old commander, which brought a fleeting – and swiftly repressed – pang of affection to Lee’s mind.  
  
The old rustbucket looked fit for retirement, he thought. Just as his father did, no doubt, although he could not for the life of him imagine William Adama as a civilian. He wondered how the old man was bearing up, and whether he was dreading the coming ceremony as much as Lee was.

As he made his approach, requesting permission to land and lock on to a tractor beam, the LSO informed him he’d be coming in hands-on, and grudgingly Lee had to admit that the officers on _Phoenicia_ had been right about his father and his Cylon paranoia. Not that it surprised him, but it irked him still that others seemed to know the man better, even if the reason for that ignorance was his own desire to steer clear of the Commander.

He’d deliberately avoided contacting anyone on board ahead of his arrival – not Kara, not Helo, and certainly not his father – but both the LSO and the deck Chief made a point of welcoming him aboard, the latter waxing lyrical about Commander Adama in a way that grated on Lee. Once again, he was having his father shoved down his throat, and the assumption that he was another fan of the old man left a bitter taste in his mouth.

It must have shown, because the Chief – Tyrol or something – cut short his praise and left Lee as soon as he exited the hangar deck in search of the rec room, keen to wash the bitterness out with a beer or three.

 _Galatica_ ’s rec room was just like _Phoenicia_ ’s – Spartan and smoke-filled, metal bulkheads echoing with the din of a half-dozen drunken triad games, the smell of beer and cheap ambrosia a welcome change from the sterile atmosphere of the rest of the battlestar. Lee made his way to the bar, scanning the crowd in the hope of spotting Kara, or Helo, but there wasn’t a familiar face around. He nursed a beer for a while, listening to the chat around him, idly tuning in and out of conversations, until one caught his attention.

“I don’t care if she’s the CAG’s right hand, she looks like the kind of girl who gives one hell of a blowjob, and from what I’ve heard she isn’t too hard to bed, man.”

“She might not be for some, Junior, but she’s way out of your league. Way out.” The man drained his beer and grinned at his fellow pilot across the table. They were both Lieutenants Junior Grade, passably good-looking kids with the arrogance and bravado of twenty-two-year-olds on their first fighter pilot posting. Lee pursed his lips. He was pretty sure he knew who they were talking about.

“C’mon, Halstead, I bet you I can get her to give me head,” the first one insisted, a leer pasted on his freckled features. Lee started to feel an itch in his right fist.

“You want to _bet_ that you can get Starbuck to blow you? Are you kidding? How much are you willing to lose?”

“Forty cubits I can get her drunk enough on decom night. You know she’s going to be toasting the Commander until she falls. And then…”

Halstead snorted into his drink and Lee felt his anger rise and coalesce into a sharp, cold point. The casual insolence and contempt displayed towards one of their own was enough to rile him, but the fact that they were talking about Kara made it intolerable.

Without thinking too long and hard about it he set his drink down, stepped across to the table and hoisted Junior up by his tanks.

“Mind your frakking mouth when you’re talking about your betters, you little frakker,” he hissed before punching him in the jaw, and the sheer pleasure of it was worth every inch of the trouble that was bound to follow.

“What the _frak_?” the other kid shouted, lunging at him, and Lee found himself at the center of an unruly melee, which was broken up minutes later by the arrival of marines.

Unsurprisingly, he ended in the brig, where he nursed his bruises philosophically. Not the best start to his family reunion. He wondered whether he’d be released in time for the ceremony, or whether the Commander would let him rot here to punish him for this egregious breach of discipline.

A couple of hours into his confinement, he was doing pushups to stave off the boredom when a familiar laugh interrupted his concentration.

“Well, well, well, Adama. Looks like the rumors I heard about you were true after all.”

Lee raised an eyebrow, counted another three pushups and stood up, stretching his back and shoulders with a yawn as he considered Kara through the bars. She looked a hell of a lot better than she had last time he saw her, and it hit him again how beautiful she was, and how much he’d missed her.

Not that he let it show. He sauntered towards the bars and saluted her with an easy grin on his face.

“Well, well, well, Sir. Looks like the ones I heard about you making captain were equally true.”

“Who would’ve thought a couple years ago we’d meet like this? _I_ ’d have put money on me being the wrong side of the bars, and you coming to rescue me.”

“Are you coming to _rescue_ me? It’s awfully sweet of you, Starbuck. You shouldn’t.”

She sighed. “It’s been a heck of a long time, Apollo. And I must be getting soft in my old age. Plus I think your father would like to see you at the ceremony. You’re expected to take part in a fly past. It’s a big deal.”

Lee groaned.

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. And you’re going to be flying his old Mark II, which has been lovingly restored by the deck crew. It’s a frakking honor, and you better rise to the occasion.”

“I’d like to say I always rise to the occasion, but I’m not sure I want to in this instance.”

“Oh, for frak’s sake. Have you even been to see him yet?”

He gestured helplessly around him and smirked.

“It’s not like I have the run of the ship here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Kara pursed her lips.

“For the love of the gods, Lee, pull yourself together, if not for your father’s sake, at least for your own self-respect. I’ll get you out if you promise to go say hello to him.”

There was a pause, then Lee looked away.

“I was hoping to avoid it.”

Her shoulders sagged a little and she sighed.

“Frakking Adamas. You really know how to bear a grudge, don’t you? He lost a son, Lee.”

“And who’s responsible for that?” Lee bit back, stung.

“Same old Lee. You haven’t changed _that_ much, then.”

“Zak was my brother!”

Kara’s eyes narrowed. “And what was he to me, nothing?”

 _Shit_. He tried to backpedal. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Frak you, Apollo,” she said, and turned on her heel. “You’re free, but I’m doing this for the old man, not for you. Show up in the ready room in twenty for the flight prep, and that’s an order, Lieutenant. What else you do with your time is your business.”

He watched her march out of the brig with a sinking feeling, and cursed himself for being such an ass. But he was damned if he was going to go talk to his father unless he absolutely had to.

It happened without warning, as he was making his way towards the ready room, when he ran into a herd of journalists headed by an overenthusiastic man who immediately recognized him – or more likely read his name patch – and insisted on a picture with the Commander. For some reason, the man seemed to have the authority to swing it, and Lee found himself maneuvered into a conference room where his father was waiting, and made to stand and fake a smile next to him. He could feel the gaze of the Commander on him, then a hand landed on his shoulder and he had to use all his self-control not to wince.

After the journalists had left, his father kept him back with a spurious offer of coffee and he couldn’t force himself to walk out on him.

“I hear things are going well on _Phoenicia_ ,” the Commander said. “Congratulations. Your CO speaks well of you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I understand you distinguished yourself on a resupply mission. No mean feat to get Shaw’s approval.”

Lee stiffened at the implication that his father had been asking about him around the Fleet, gathering news, or worse, having them communicated to him routinely. Not for the first time, he wondered whether he’d have to leave the service to achieve some privacy, and remembered that with the Commander’s retirement, perhaps he could achieve a degree of separation. Perhaps.

“How’s your mother?”

“Getting married,” Lee replied tersely.

“Good for her. We spoke about a year ago, had a real heart to heart, it was good.”

This was torture. Lee forced himself to breathe evenly.

“I’m glad to hear that, sir. Will that be all?”

“Why don’t you talk to me, Lee?” his father asked, his tone almost pleading, and Lee wanted to bolt out of the door and never come back.

“What do you want to talk about?” _Please, gods, don’t let it be Zak. Anything but Zak._

“Anything, Lee. You’ve been here hours – and yes, I know about your trip to the brig. But I haven’t seen you for almost two years and…”

“Well I don’t have anything to say,” Lee interrupted, his anger starting to take over. “My orders said report here and participate in the ceremony so I’m – I’m here and I’m going to participate in the ceremony. There wasn’t anything in my orders about having any heart-to-heart chats with the old man.”

“Accidents happen, in the service.”

Oh, for those words to be left unsaid. “Dad, listen, I..”

But the Commander plowed on. “You know, all the things you talked to me about the last time we were together–”

Too late. This was going to happen regardless, just as it had two years ago.

“I really don't want to do this,” Lee pleaded, to no avail.

“–at the funeral, they still ring in my ears after two years,” his father said, and Lee’s fraying self-control just snapped.

“Good!” he spat out. “Good. Cause you know what? They were meant to.”

“Zak had a choice. You both did.”

That was rich coming from the man who’d all but frogmarched them into the service.

 _“A man isn't a man until he wears the wings of a Viper pilot,”_ Lee sneered “Doesn't that sound at all familiar to you? I bought that hook, line and sinker, and then Zak just followed in my footsteps, just like you wanted.”

“That's not fair, son,” the Commander said. He looked crushed, his face sallow and gray and older than Lee remembered. But the bitterness couldn’t be stopped.

“No, it's not fair. Because one of us wasn't cut out to wear the uniform.”

“He earned his wings, just like we all do,” the old man said, but there was defeat in his voice.

“One of us wasn't cut out to be a pilot, one of us wouldn't have even made it into flight school if his old man – his daddy – hadn't pulled some strings,” Lee went on, his anger fuelled by guilt and despair. “And I didn’t have the balls to stop him, to tell him he was making a mistake.”

“That's an exaggeration,” his father protested. “I did nothing for him that I wouldn't have done for anyone else.”

“You're not even listening to me,” Lee shouted. “Why can't you get this through your head? Zak did not belong in that plane. He shouldn't have been there. I might have my share of the blame, but in the end, he was doing it for _you_ , Dad. Face it, you killed him.”

He didn’t even wait to be dismissed but stormed out of the briefing room, because he knew if he was going to stay there another minute, he’d either punch his father or start crying in front of him, and either was intolerable.

************************

He was a couple of minutes late to the pre-flight briefing, but one look at his face and Kara apparently thought better of saying anything to him. It was all very straightforward, a few simple but impressive maneuvers that he could do in his sleep, especially with Kara flying his wing, and then he’d be deployed to escort one of the passenger ships heading back to Caprica, and could kiss _Galactica_ and his dad goodbye. And Kara, too, for the foreseeable future, because after this little family reunion he couldn’t imagine her ever talking to him again.

He caught a discreet wave from Helo across the room, and nodded back, wondering how much his friend knew about those past few hours on _Galactica_ , and whether he too would be siding with his father and Kara.

Flying his dad’s antiquated Viper was less of a chore than he expected. He had never actually flown such an old model, and it turned out to be a lot more maneuverable and responsive than he expected, with a pleasing simplicity to its controls that gave the pilot more initiative and responsibility than later versions.

The main reason, though, was that he was flying with Kara as his wingman, and for all the bad blood between them over his father, there was nothing to compare with their matched grace in flight. She was the only pilot he’d encountered whose skill exceeded his (by more than he was willing to admit to her face, sometimes), but more than that, they really clicked when they flew together. The first time they’d ever entered a sim console together had been an eye-opener, and since then Lee had always grabbed at any chance to fly with her, and Kara with him.

This time was no different, and he bitterly regretted the fact that he would have to leave so soon. She landed back on the battlestar while he hovered above, politely waiting for his father’s speech – not that he had a choice – before his charge showed up to shepherd home. As her Viper vanished from his DRADIS, a message flashed on his screen.

_Safe ride home, Apollo._

A few hours later, when the ride had turned into desperate flight and home was no longer, the memory of that last message from Kara seemed a poignant reminder of the fragility and futility of human endeavor.

********************************

The second time Lee clapped eyes on his father’s ship mid-space was when Colonial One – as it now was – came out of the navigational challenge that was the approach to Ragnar Anchorage, trailing its rag-tag assembly of fleeing freighters and cruisers. This time, the old ship looked both the worse for wear – the port flight-pod was a mess and there were fresh scars on the hull – and infinitely more welcoming than it had just a few hours ago.

The knowledge that his father was there – and still alive – was a peculiar source of comfort as Lee tried to adjust to the thought that he had lost all his friends, his family – his _mother_ , gods – his shipmates and comrades, and that it was, truly, the end of the world. He tried not to think of Kara but couldn’t stop himself picturing her spinning in deep space, trapped inside the coffin of her useless Viper, and wished that the Cylons had had the mercy to destroy their stranded enemies. Not that he had any illusions.

He stepped out of the ship and was immediately annexed by Laura Roslin on her mission to extract supplies and support from the ship’s commander. Lee was bracing himself to meet his father and slightly taken aback to run into Tigh, acting every inch the abrasive hardass. He was sent back to the flight deck with instructions to report to the CAG and wondered – as he walked down the meandering hallways of the ship – who the unfortunate bastard in charge of possibly the last Colonial Air Wing in existence could be.

A deckhand directed him to the underside of a Viper, from which a pair of flight-suited legs protruded, and it took Lee all of three seconds to realize whose they were. He’d never thought he’d feel so happy to see a fellow human being as he was in that instant to see Kara Thrace. He stood there for a few seconds, drinking her sight in, her tousled blonde hair and grease-smeared forearms, and nudged her with his foot.

“Hey.”

The look of disbelief, then wonder, in her eyes was a joy to behold. She pushed herself out from under the Viper and got back to her feet, staring at him all the time.

“I thought you were dead,” she finally said.

“I thought _you_ were. It’s good to be wrong.”

The corner of her lips twitched.

“Well you should be used to it by now.”

They stared at each other, overcome with emotion and relief, and Lee realized that if he didn’t say something, anything, he might start to tear up.

“So, I guess you’re the new CAG,” he ventured, and she smiled wryly.

“Yeah, that's what they tell me.”

“Huh. I didn’t think you were a big enough dipstick for the job. Sir.”

They were still standing frozen in front of each other, and Lee couldn’t stop looking at her, imprinting her familiar features anew in his brain, thanking the gods that he had been fortunate enough to have both Kara and his father survive the unspeakable holocaust.

As if on cue, she nodded towards the hatch.

“Does your father know you're still breathing? Because his quarters are on the way to the ready room.”

“I'll let him know,” he said, stepping back from her, unwilling to leave but conscious that this time, he really had to.

“Pre-flight briefing in an hour, Lieutenant,” she called at him as she slid back under the Viper, a chilling reminder that he was now a fighter pilot in a time of war.

On the way down the gunmetal gray hallways, Lee kept wondering what he was going to say to the old man after their last scene, and coming up blank. Everyone was dead now, not just Zak, and the Commander was alive, and Lee knew that he was only alive because he’d followed in the paternal footsteps and had become a pilot – and been summoned to the decommissioning ceremony, which was the clincher.

In his father’s office, he caught sight of a childhood picture of Zak and him, smiling at the camera, their mother looking impossibly young beside them, and had to choke back tears. As he turned to leave, the Commander walked in, and next thing he knew Lee was hugging him and manfully struggling to contain his emotions.

 

 

*********************************

Having Kara for CAG was probably the weirdest part of Lee’s weird new life.

After the first few days of insanity – the sleepless, jump-filled hours sliced neatly in almost-half when they could feel their enemies breathing down their necks and Lee seriously thought he wasn’t going to make it – after the devastating encounter with the _Olympic Carrier_ , he thought it was bound to get easier.

But it didn’t, not really. Their first confrontation, when she went toe to toe with him to get him to take his stims (he obeyed, but only after teasing her for not having the balls to order him to do his job, and he could tell he’d hit a nerve), had been a welcome reminder of older days, when they used to challenge each other all the time. Most of the time, though, he just missed the old camaraderie and wondered what had happened to them.

A lot of it was her – Captain Thrace was subtly different to the woman he’d known before. Lee remembered her as a rule-breaking, daredevil pilot; his match and more at the sims and in flight; the cocky cadet he’d had to rescue from hack more times than he could count. But this new, rule-bound Kara – head wrapped in duty rosters until she surfaced for air; stuck in the poky CAG’s office day after day, pushing paper; taking long meetings with the Commander and the XO – this Kara was a virtual unknown, except when they had a CAP together, which was rare.

Perhaps it was the role reversal that had now been forced on them. He had always been –when they knew each other, before – the straight arrow headed for command, the serious one, the officer who took his responsibilities to heart, while she bucked authority at every turn. No longer. Now he was the one whiling away his scant off-duty hours with card games and beer, and she was hardly ever seen in the rec room.

Lee couldn’t help thinking that he could have easily been in her place, if things had gone differently, but he thanked the gods he’d escaped the drudgery and the daily contact with the old man. Their relationship had improved since their first angry encounter before the Cylons attacked, but he still felt uneasy in the presence of his father, and grateful that he spent most of his time with pilots and in his Viper, where at least he could channel his frustration and fear into action, and feel that he was doing something worthwhile to boot.

His path crossed Kara’s occasionally – between shifts, in the head, or the mess – but she was always buried in schedules or on her way to CIC, and their exchanges were few and far between. They shared the senior pilots’ duty locker, but more often than not her curtains were drawn when he came in, or her rack was empty.

There were moments. One morning Lee had just knocked off CAP duty and exited the showers when she stomped into the room scowling and promptly marched past him to her locker. She looked pissed.

“You could have told me, Lee,” she muttered as she grabbed a uniform jacket from a hanger and examined it critically.

“What?” he said good-naturedly as he toweled his hair.

“About the fight.”

“What fight?”

He turned and frowned at her. What the frak was she talking about? He hadn’t been in a fight here since…

_Oh._

“You know what fight.”

Lee shrugged, but she wasn’t letting off so easily.

“The one where you apparently thought my reputation was worth a stint in the brig. Which is really, really _sweet_ , Lee, but why the hell didn’t you mention that’s what it was all about?”

He was evasive.

“Things kind of got in the way, you know, what with the end of the world and all.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were chicken.”

“Actually, I figured you’d never find out,” he admitted, trying not to look at her as she dropped her towel and pulled her sweats on, her back to him. But he couldn’t help seeing the flash of creamy flesh that reminded him of things he was avoiding thinking about.

“For the record, Apollo, I’m not a damsel in distress whose honor needs guarding. But Junior was an arrogant little frak, the gods rest his soul, and I can’t say he didn’t deserve an ass-kicking,” she said, her back still turned, but he could hear the smile in her voice.

“I got it. I’ll just place my own bet next time.”

She turned then, and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Think you could get me drunk enough to bed _you_?”

There was something indefinable in her eyes, almost a challenge, and Lee felt a shudder go down his spine. Gods, but he was willing to try.

They held each other’s gaze for a few beats, and then the loudspeaker crackled with a by-now-familiar call.

“Action stations. Action stations. Set condition one throughout the ship. Repeat. This is not a drill, all personnel to action stations!”

He didn’t even have time to regret the missed opportunity as the adrenaline took over and they dressed frantically next to each other in the rush to make it to the deck.

 

*******************************

 

A few days into his new life, he decided he had had enough of barely seeing Kara outside her cockpit, and went looking for her. The door to the CAG’s office – a glorified broom closet – was slightly ajar, but he knocked.

“Come in.”

Kara looked up from a pile of flight schedules as he walked through the hatch, and her tired face brightened when she saw him.

“Lee. A rare pleasure to see you here.”

He leaned against the wall and smiled at her.

“You’ve been stuck here all hours, Kara – time to come out to play.”

She sighed and rubbed her forehead.

“No time for that, LT. A CAG’s work is never done.”

Her desk was a mess of papers, piles teetering on the brink of collapse, the floor around her stacked with flight evals and personnel reports.

“Looks like your paperwork is threatening to get the better of you,” he said, and watched as she sighed again and nodded.

“I’m not cut out for this shit, Lee – the gods know I’m not, but the job’s got to be done.”

“What do you say to a deal?”

“Like what?”

“Like I help you with that stuff for an hour, and then you come and join the triad game in the rec room and relax for a while.”

Her eyes lit up.

“I could get on board this. You mean it?”

“Would I bullshit you?”

She considered him for a moment and grinned.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Lee crossed the tiny room and dragged a chair alongside hers.

“Right. What do you want me to do?”

An hour later, the flight rosters were in semi-decent shape for the next week or so, and he’d managed to coax her out of CAG mode and into a seat at one of the triad tables.

“I thought you’d forgotten how to play,” he whispered to Kara as she fanned out the cards that Flattop dealt. She smirked at him.

“You wish. Watch your credits vanish, flyboy.”

“In your dreams, Starbuck,” he answered, throwing a handful of cubits into the pot. “Count me in.”

It was just like old times, except that he wasn’t as naïve as he’d been a few years ago. He was pleased to see that she noticed, raising her eyebrows when he successfully bluffed her out of a better hand.

“You’ve learned a few tricks since we played last, Apollo.”

Flattop snorted as he dealt the last few cards.

“Tell you the truth, Starbuck, he’s been fleecing us for the past few nights. We were hoping you could put him back in his place.”

“Is that so?” she replied, signaling that she wanted another card.

“Apparently I’ve spent my time less wisely than you have in the past couple of years,” Lee said with a shrug. “Now, I’ll raise you twenty.”

As the game went on, the other players dropped off, and there were only the two of them left, with Lee willing to bet that his hand could beat anything she could throw at him. He raised the pot another thirty and waited for her expectantly, schooling his features into a mask of indifference. He was getting very good at that.

“Damn, Apollo, Helo warned me you’d become quite the card sharp and I thought it was just him,” Kara said, frustrated, as her hand wavered over her remaining cubits.

“It was you who sent him to visit me, wasn’t it?” Lee asked, willfully ignoring the wave of grief that Helo’s name evoked. He was getting pretty good at that, too; but then they all were, because most conversations involved talking about missing friends, lovers, family, homes until the whole frakking ship was riddled with grief, and mourning was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

There was no reply, but when he looked at Kara she was blushing.

“Didn’t think I could ever get you to blush, Starbuck. Must’ve hit a nerve.”

“For frak’s sake, Lee, it wasn’t like that. Just… well, you know – we’d heard you had gone back…”

“We?”

“Gods, Lee, will you stop being so touchy! Yes, we, your friends, okay? And I know your dad was worried too but he never talked about it and never asked me to do anything, I swear.”

He said nothing, just looked at her skeptically, then put down his cards with a flourish.

“Full colors. I believe the pot is mine.”

The look on her face was worth more than the pile of cubits in front of him, and he burst out laughing. For a second, she looked like she was about to hit him, then the laughter won over and she cracked a massive grin.

“Apollo, you sonofabitch!”

All of a sudden, it was back, that easy give-and-take between them, and Lee figured if they could hold on to that, the rest would fall into line eventually. Even if she was her CAG, and his dad was their CO, and it was the end of the world.

**********************************

The respite was short-lived.

Three days after their reconciliation over cards, a random accident on deck as Flattop was celebrating his thousandth landing lost them thirteen pilots (and incapacitated another half-dozen or so for the foreseeable). The pointlessness of their deaths – after they had survived the holocaust which all but wiped out the human race – was an additional blow, but it took second place to the now-urgent task of finding enough pilots to ensure the security of the fleet.

The commander requested passenger information from the fleet captains and passed it on to the CAG with instructions to find replacements. The next day, secluded in Kara’s cubbyhole, Lee found himself poring over ship manifests looking for anyone with a shred of flying experience while Kara swore as she tried to patch together CAP schedules riddled with holes.

“You’d think there were more pilots on a fleet of spaceships,” Lee muttered as he contemplated the handful of names on his list. “Shame so many of them are needed to fly the damn ships.”

“There’s got to be some flyboys scattered around,” Kara said. “How the frak am I supposed to keep even half my birds in the air at this rate? Everyone’s going to have to pull double duty, and even then…”

“I mean, look at this,” Lee interrupted. “There’s a few shuttle jockeys, boonie jumpers, a washout from the Academy… this is a joke.”

“Show me.”

He handed her the sheaf of papers. There were maybe a dozen names circled in all, none of them worth looking at under normal circumstances – but that was all there was, and they had no choice.

“Any instructors in there?”

“There’s one on the list who could make the grade, but if you mean someone to train nuggets, no, there isn’t. Apart from you, of course,” he added with a half-smile, and the look in her eyes was pure murder.

“Sorry, Lee, but if you think I have time to whip new pilots into shape _and_ run this show, you must be kidding. You, on the other hand, are fully qualified to show them the ropes, so I suggest you start drawing up some sort of lesson plan to get them in the cockpit.”

“What? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Relax – I’ll give you a few pointers, and I’ll even come scare them for you so they toe the line, but you’re going to be my chief instructor, Apollo, and you better get used to it. And yes, the old man did give me the go-ahead.”

It figured. Once again, things were being decided behind his back and he had no choice but to follow the path laid by his father and Kara, which made him want to punch walls.

“I’m surprised my father trusts me with impressionable young minds,” he said, because he was, and walked out of the room.

“Where d’you think you’re going?”

“To prepare my lesson plan,” he snapped.

Kara snorted behind him but didn’t reply – much to his relief – because he didn’t trust himself to keep what was left of his cool.

The nuggets turned out to be even more of a challenge than Lee had expected; an unruly bunch of semi-trained pilots who would have failed basic training before they even got a chance to enter flight school. But he had no choice, and the need – as everyone, from his commander to his CAG, kept impressing on him – was critical, so he knuckled down.

Kara was as good as her word. He took the first batch of nuggets out for a spin in the Vipers and she tore them a new one when they fouled their landings while Lee played good guy and sent them off to revise their flight manuals. The next couple of days, he sweated as he made them maneuver through the fleet, but some of them were starting to get the hang of it, and Lee began to think he might make pilots of them yet.

Three of them in particular showed promise, chief among them a smart-mouthed girl with hairtrigger reflexes and a foul temper named Katraine, soon shortened to Kat. The Academy washout, a dozy kid dubbed Hotdog by Kara, was a lot better than Lee expected, good enough to make him wonder what spectacular frakup he must have performed to get booted from flight school. A good-natured guy – Chuckles, by popular consent – completed the top team.

To his surprise, Lee discovered he enjoyed teaching them. Kara had briefed him quite thoroughly on basic training techniques and he found his own way of drilling the kids into the fine art of flying Vipers. It was nothing like the kind of training he’d received at the Academy – no flight simulators, no time for in-depth theory before climbing into the cockpit, nothing but seat-of-the-pants flying and accelerated combat training, and the hope that – when it came to it – the nuggets would be able to remember enough to survive a firefight. But it was rewarding, and that in itself was a breath of fresh air among all the death and destruction.

It wasn’t just about making Viper jocks out of freight runners; it was also about turning civilians into military, and with the exception of Hotdog, none of the new recruits had any kind of military background, or any obvious aptitude for soldiering. But a few could shoot, and what they all lacked in training they made up for in motivation. The fall of the Colonies had given each and every one of them a thirst for revenge that focused them on the task at hand.

The nuggets’ newly acquired skills were put to the test earlier than expected during a training exercise with Lee when a warning came through his comm.

“Attention all alert fighters, this is _Galactica_ , we have multiple contacts on DRADIS – set Condition One throughout the fleet.”

“Frak,” Lee swore, checking his screen. Sure enough, there was a cluster of lights flickering on what looked like a direct intercept course with his team of combat virgins.

“Hotdog, Kat, Chuckles, on my six, we’re heading back to _Galactica_. Do not engage the enemy. Let the alert team handle it.”

“Roger that, sir. Chuckles out.”

“Hotdog on course, sir, I’m on your six.”

Lee flipped his Viper end-to-end and swooped back towards the bulk of the fleet, acutely aware that he had very little time to get his charges back to the relative safety of _Galactica_. On their current heading, the Raiders would cut them off from the rest of the fleet in a couple of minutes.

“Frak!” It was Kat’s voice. A quick glance at his screen confirmed that she was dragging behind them, perilously slow compared to the incoming Raiders.

“What’s wrong, Kat?”

“Misfiring thruster, sir. I can’t hold my course at speed. Had to slow down.”

“I can see that. Try pushing it harder, compensating with your controls.”

“I’m trying, sir.” Her voice was strained. There was little chance of evading the Raiders at this rate, and she knew it. Lee cursed under his breath.

“Hotdog, Chuckles, I want you to head straight for _Galactica_ without me; if you hit it now, you’ll get past those Raiders before the alert Vipers come and intercept them. I’ll see you there.”

“But sir…”

“Just do it, ensign. _Galactica_ , this is Apollo, one of my team is having engine trouble and I’m going to assist her. Send backup ASAP.”

He banked sharply and headed towards Kat’s crippled ship. She was doing her best to keep it flying straight, but she struggled to keep her bearing on one thruster, and certainly didn’t have the skill to outmaneuver a couple of Raiders intent on engaging them.

“Apollo, where the frak are you?” a familiar voice buzzed in his headset. “I’m on target for intercept in… frak it, four minutes – can you hold?”

“Roger that Starbuck, enemy contact imminent, we’ll hold them off.”

The cluster of Cylon Raiders had split, with two chasing Hotdog and Chuckles back towards _Galactica_ , and Lee was fairly confident his pilots could outrun them on a short distance. More worrying were the other three fighters that had veered off towards Kat, and were almost on his tail. He flipped his ship and shot a barrage of missiles at them before spinning it back towards Kat’s Viper.

“Permission to engage, sir!” she called to him urgently, and he granted it, hoping she was as good a shot in the cockpit as she was in the firing range, and that she’d avoid shooting him.

He shouldn’t have worried – what she lacked in finesse with the stick she more than made up with her shooting skills, sending the Raider closest to him spinning off his axis and giving Lee the opportunity to blow him up. The second Cylon was tougher, and would have winged Kat if Lee hadn’t interposed himself between them, crippling the motherfrakker with a couple of well-aimed shots but losing what felt like half his tail in the encounter.

It took everything he had to regain control of the Viper, and in those few seconds he was helpless and expected to be blown to shreds. Much to his grateful surprise, Kat apparently kept her head and shot the last remaining Raider, because when Lee got out of his tailspin, he was faced with a cloud of twisted metal and organic debris.

“Gods, Kat – _you_ did that?”

“Hell, yes, sir. You ok?”

“Affirmative. Good shot, ensign. Starbuck better watch out.”

“Watch out for what, Apollo?” the rejoinder came in his ear as Kara’s Viper appeared in front of him.

“Your Top Gun trophy mug, Starbuck. She saved my ass while you were taking your time.”

“We’ll see about that. You guys okay to get back to the ship or do you need a tow?”

“We’ll make it. Go give’em hell for us.”

“Roger that, Apollo. See you back at base.”

She spun her ship back towards the remaining Cylons clustered around _Galactica_ and Lee watched her Viper disappear in the star-studded darkness. The Fleet had winked out to the next jump point during their brief engagement, and all that remained was the old warship and her fighters, towards which he and Kat set a course, limping along as they could with their damaged Vipers.

When they’d made it back to the deck in one piece, Kat looking paler than death once she’d removed her helmet, Lee stepped up to her. He removed the wings from his collar and pinned them to hers with a smile.

“You’ve earned those, ensign. You did good.”

Her answering grin almost made the close shave he’d had with death worth it.

 

*********************************

 

Now that they were working much more closely together, Lee found that Kara started taking center stage in his dreams. Most nights, he replayed combat situations, the adrenaline often high enough to wake him, heart racing and disorientated for the few seconds it took to situate himself in his rack and calm down.

Sometimes, though, the dreams were altogether of another nature, and featured his CAG in positions best described as compromising. What made them hardest to deal with was how neatly they dovetailed with his fantasies in the waking world.

He’d fallen asleep after taking a double CAP shift – trying to process as many nuggets into active duty as soon as possible – when he woke with a start from a jumble of pornographic images, chief among them Kara’s open wet mouth and her glorious breasts. He was painfully erect, and cursed himself for not sleeping through to the inevitable conclusion of his erotic dream.

In the past weeks, Lee had gotten used once again to waking in a patch of his own semen, as if he’d regressed ten years back to his adolescence. He charted it to the constant stress and dislocation of his new existence, and the barely-acknowledged trauma of being on a permanent war footing, his life always on the line. Besides, he’d come to enjoy the dreams – since it was as close as he’d ever get to the real thing.

This time, though, he was going to have to work for it. The knowledge that Kara was asleep a couple of racks away, behind a flimsy curtain, was, as ever, a powerful aphrodisiac. He’d spent many a night listening to the muffled sounds of his bunkmates jerking off – no privacy on this battlestar, either – wondering whether a soft moan was hers, stroking himself in time to some woman’s syncopated breathing, imagining Kara’s fingers, slick and nimble, teasing her to the edge of ecstasy.

Tonight there was no sound except snores, and the rustling of bedsheets as a pilot tossed and turned in uneasy slumber, but Lee was too turned on to attempt sleep without relief. He snaked a hand into his regulation-issue briefs, wrapped it around his insistent erection, and closed his eyes, trying to recapture the dream that had brought him to that state.

It was still close enough for the vivid images to flash through his mind, and he had to stifle a groan as he visualized Kara half-naked in his rack, tanks and bra in a tangle around her neck – nipples standing proud – and imagined how they’d feel in his mouth. He’d seen her naked often enough – even without staring – that he knew exactly what her breasts looked like, the areolas pink on her pale skin, and he hardened further at the memory.

His brain kicked into overdrive, craving stimulation, while his hand kept a feverish rhythm on his cock. Kara had flipped him over now and was straddling him, hot flesh sheathing his cock; she was mouthing obscenities at him, urging him on, begging him for more, deeper, harder, her voice turning into a sob until Lee could hold it in no longer and he erupted in orgasm, coming in long spurts on his bare stomach. The mingled pleasure and relief washed over him as he struggled to keep himself from moaning out loud, and as his heartbeat subsided he felt himself slip into unconsciousness, sated.

Real life didn’t offer him much in the way of opportunities to let out steam, he reflected a few days later, after Kara had delivered a terse assessment of an upcoming raid on a Cylon tylium mine that had less chance of succeeding than it had of killing at least half the pilots involved. For all the moments of snatched complicity between them, much of their interaction was strictly professional, CAG to pilot, senior officer to subordinate, and even though Lee knew the rules, he chafed at the restrictions.

The mission turned out to be an unqualified – if costly – success, thanks largely to Lee’s decision to take a huge gamble and try an insane stunt that worked against all the odds. It was the kind of thing Starbuck pulled without a second thought; or so she gave the impression. For Lee, though, it was a very deliberate act of recklessness when he decided that the only chance they had of hitting their target was to aim his bird into the conveyor tunnel where ships loaded the tylium, even though he had no guarantee that would lead him all the way through to the refinery itself.

He was as surprised as anyone when he turned out to be right, and the grin on Kara’s face when they both made it back to _Galactica_ in one piece was worth every second of sheer terror he experienced as he flew blind through the tunnel by the seat of his pants.

“Apollo, you magnificent bastard, that was one hell of a piece of flying, and I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” he said, the feeling of euphoria threatening to overwhelm him.

“I said,” she enunciated, “I couldn’t have done it better myself. Not that you gave me a chance to try for it.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure that crazy-ass plan of yours could even possibly work, but it was worth a shot.”

She tossed him a cigar and someone else thrust a bottle of something in his hand, and Lee felt happy and lightheaded as he swigged some of the booze before biting off the end of the cigar and lighting it. Moments like these were few and far between, and he intended to make the most of them.

The good feeling continued throughout the rest of the day, shared by all on the ship. Lee got slapped on the back and high-fived left and right, and by the time he made it to the rec room after his debrief, there were several beers stacked up waiting for him. Three drinks in, Kat materialized next to him, and he grimaced as he remembered Chuckles’ Viper blowing up in a fireball to his left as they approached the base.

“I’m sorry, Kat,” he said quietly as he motioned for another beer and slid it across the bar to her. “I frakking wish he’d made it.”

“We knew it was a dangerous mission, sir. Chuckles, I mean, Perry, knew. He…” She cleared her throat.

“We’re none of us under the illusion that this is anything but war, sir.”

Lee nodded, and raised his glass.

“To Donald Perry.”

She raised hers in response and they both drained their beers.

“It’s just…” Lee carefully placed his glass in front of him and studied it, not looking at her eyes. “You were civilians. You hadn’t chosen this.”

“I don’t think any of us are civilians anymore. And, sorry, but it’s not like you’ve been in a war before, any of you. Well, except for the Commander, and the XO, I guess.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

“Been training for it, though. It helps.”

“So does having your home planet nuked to shit. Sir.”

He looked up at Kat and she was smirking, the challenge in her eyes reminiscent of Starbuck at her best, and he grinned back at her.

“What say we get some of the Chief’s moonshine, with another couple of the last beers in the universe as chasers?”

He could feel a reckless mood coming over him, mingled with the post-combat buzz that usually kicked his testosterone into high mode. Kat was feisty, well on her way to becoming a damn good pilot, and if she reminded him of the unattainable, that wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She was easy to talk to, all the more so as the moonshine went down and they traded stories about flying. And she was definitely hitting on him, which amused and flattered him. It had been a while, after all.

Her knee kept bumping against Lee’s at the bar, and after a while he let his leg press back against her thigh, creating a pleasant rush of heat to his groin. He let his mind wander, imagining a couple of possible scenarios involving Kat and fewer clothes in a quiet locker somewhere on one of _Galactica_ ’s numerous emptier decks, trying to ignore the fact that previous versions of this fantasy had involved Kara, when Kat’s voice intruded.

“So, sir, what’s the deal between you and the CAG?”

“Huh? What do you mean?” he said, startled out of his erotic reverie.

“Captain Thrace. You know her from before, right?” There was a slight smile playing on her lips, and Lee tried to figure whether he was reading more into it than she meant.

“We met at the Academy,” he offered. “We’re friends.”

Kat’s grin widened into a leer.

“Friends?”

“Yes, Kat. _Friends_. Is that a concept you find hard to understand?”

“In that case,” she said, “I shouldn’t worry, right?”

And she placed her hand square on Lee’s thigh, high enough that his breath hitched. But there was something in her voice and her quick scan of the room behind him that made Lee turn around, and sure enough, there was Starbuck in the doorway, chatting to a couple of pilots, one arm waving the stub of a cigar around. At which point he realized that he wasn’t actually ready to get caught in a compromising position with one of his nuggets by his CAG, and he shifted slightly.

Kat raised an eyebrow at him.

“Sir?”

“There are such things as frat regs, ensign,” Lee murmured, and she finally dropped the hand. Part of him immediately regretted the loss of contact, but seeing Kara had snapped him out of his booze-fueled trance, and he knew he had to stop it there.

“Maybe you should explain them to me sometime, lieutenant.”

Kat winked at him as she slid off her stool and Lee felt a brief pang of longing as he watched her negotiate her way through the packed room towards a group of boisterous pilots playing drinking games, weaving between the chairs and tables with understated grace.

He turned back to the bar just in time for a fresh round of drinks to land in front of him, courtesy of a few deckhands on the other side of the room, and he raised a glass to them. He was still the man of the hour, Kara was grinning at him from across the bar, and he had two fresh beers and a couple of shots in front of him. Life was looking up.


	4. Exile (One Step Forward, Two Steps Back)

Lee eyed himself warily in the mirror and wiped the dried blood from his jaw. He looked like a thug with the scrape balanced by an angry welt on his forehead, and no amount of cleaning would cover up the fact that he’d been in a serious brawl earlier in the day. At least he’d been on the right side of the law this time.

It had been a strange and intense couple of days on _Cloud Nine,_ fizzing with politics and intrigue and suppressed frustration. He still didn’t know what was really going on, what Zarek’s game was, bidding for the vice-presidency while apparently plotting to kill President Roslin; and whether the President’s choice of Baltar as his – victorious – challenger had been a stroke of genius or the desperate last act of a doomed politician. Lee wasn’t at all sure he trusted Baltar.

What he did know, he reflected as he took his dress uniform off its hanger and shrugged it on, was that spending all this time with Kara handling security on _Cloud Nine_ had been a ball. Working in tandem at the Quorum meeting and afterwards in the bar – when the brawl started and they arrested Valance – they were back in sync like they hadn’t been for ages, except in flight. Even during the interrogation, they’d fallen into rhythm effortlessly, Kara taking on the good cop role while Lee shouted and acted menacing, and it felt right.

He smoothed the last wrinkles as he secured the clasp of his jacket, straightened his collar and pinned his wings on the ceremonial leather sash. He took a long look at the mirror, smiling at the textbook colonial officer staring back – even the bruises fitted the martial stereotype – and wondered whether Kara would turn up in dress grays or make use of the traditional freedom afforded female officers to wear a formal dress, if the occasion was a civilian one. He couldn’t quite conjure the image of Kara in a dress, although he had dim memories of her wearing a skirt, once, when he’d met her and Zak for lunch on Caprica; but he wouldn’t have put money on it.

The memory flashed back vividly – a pale green skirt with tiny black dots, how could he have forgotten – when he walked into the function room set aside for the Colonial Day party and saw her standing at the bar. Her back was virtually bare, just a few straps of blue satin and chiffon criss-crossing her pale skin, and his eyes followed the line of her neck up until he caught the glint of earrings in her casually-styled hair. Then she turned to look at him, and he was speechless. Somehow he would never have imagined his CAG in high heels and a backless evening dress, but she looked frakking gorgeous for it, every inch of her, and he felt his heart pounding in his throat.

“So, um” he faltered, “turns out you do clean up good sometimes.”

Her grin widened.

“Should I have let you know in advance?”

“No, no – it’s great to have a surprise. And I guess I’m sorry I… doubted you. Um…” He was as tongue-tied as a teenager at his first dance, his brain refusing to process the fact that Kara was dolled up and wearing makeup, waiting for him to make a move.

“Lee, if you want to ask me to dance, just ask,” she said, and he found his voice again.

“You want to dance?”

“Me in a dress is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said, taking the arm he offered and following him onto the crowded dancefloor. _Twice_ , thought Lee as he guided her through enthusiastic couples, but considering how bad he’d been at remembering the first time, she probably had a point.

The music was inoffensive, some crowd-pleasing big-band tunes, and it was all too easy to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her close, almost to lose himself in the feel and smell of her. It was less tylium and engine grease than usual, but still Kara despite the floral perfume and scented powder. He inhaled deeply, resisting the temptation to nuzzle her neck.

The dance ended and the band segued into another number, the tempo slightly faster, when newly-elected Vice-President Gaius Baltar materialized next to Lee and smiled brightly at Kara, extending a hand.

“Mind if I cut in, Lieutenant?”

Lee could have punched him then and there, but he kept his polite officer’s mask and bowed out. Behind Baltar’s back, Kara rolled his eyes at him, mouthing a promise that the next dance would be his, and Lee retreated to the bar for a calming beer.

It was a pleasure to watch the dancers, the sheer exuberance of some of them more than making up for any lack of technique. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen so many people enjoying themselves in such a carefree manner, and when he spied his father twirling the president around the dance floor he laughed out loud. The old man still had it, he admitted grudgingly, and he made a nice couple with Roslin. It was cheering to watch the two leaders of the Fleet letting their hair down on Colonial Day of all days, showing the example, proving that there was still more to life than survival and flight, that there was still a time and place for fun.

As if to prove his point, Kara reappeared in his line of vision, just as stunning as she had been a few moments earlier but now a little flushed, having dispatched the doctor who was now slobbering over a bevy of young women fluttering around him like moths to the flame. Good riddance, Lee thought as he went back into the fray with Kara, his arm molded around her waist in an embrace that felt far more intimate than it actually was.

Their second dance was slower, and he could feel himself getting slightly aroused as they moved in tempo with each other, anticipating each other’s moves easily, just as they did when flying.

“Who knew you could dance, Apollo?” Kara said with a sideways glance, her hips brushing against his.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Lee splayed one hand on her bare back and tightened his embrace. He was already half-hard and he was thankful that his dress coat hung low over his pants, unlike his more revealing blues.

“One of my many hidden talents, Starbuck,” he replied, and he could have sworn she blushed. Emboldened, he pressed his leg between hers, and she must have felt his erection against her thigh, because she took a sharp breath, and her eyes widened.

He held her stare, daring her to say something, _anything_ , but she stayed silent and continued to sway with him to the music, her body molded to his in an unambiguously erotic dance. That golden moment – as he came to think of it later – lasted all the way to the end of the song, by which time Lee was harder than steel and had come up with at least six different places they could escape for a quick frak, but when the music stopped so did Kara. She was aroused, no doubt about that, her cheeks flushed and her eyes dark and liquid, not to mention the patch of heat on Lee’s thigh where she’d been rubbing up against him.

It didn’t seem to matter. Abruptly, she pulled away from him and smoothed her skirt.

“I gotta go, Lee. There’s… stuff I have to sort out before tomorrow. I’m sorry.” She sounded apologetic and flustered, so very unlike the Kara he knew that even through the cloud of lust, Lee found it jarring.

“But…” he said, and it was too late, she’d turned on her high heel and stalked out of the room without so much as a backward glance to him.

Lords of Kobol, the woman was going to drive him insane. He was left there, looking at her retreating back while he stewed in a mixture of frustrated desire, anger and confusion, swearing to himself that he would never trust his instincts with her ever again, because clearly Kara Thrace operated on a different plane to most mortals.

He marched back to the bar and ordered a large ambrosia with a beer chaser, knocked them straight back, and ordered more. Godsdammit, but he had been so close – he knew Kara wanted this, too, and he wasn’t sure why she’d walked off, except perhaps that she didn’t want to face up to this, whatever _this_ was.

Three shots and a couple of beers in, Lee was beginning to relax a little – enough to look around in case Kara came back, which he knew wasn’t going to happen but couldn’t help hoping. He leaned back against the bar, rolling his shoulders to stretch them, and was idly checking out the girls walking past when Kat shimmied across the dance floor in a tight pale satin sheath that showcased her ass, and he found himself distracted.

Kat must have noticed, because next thing he knew she was perched on the stool next to him and calling for a drink, her smile infectious.

“Having fun tonight, sir?”

Lee paused before he answered, long enough to drain the glass he was holding and to feel the blissful glow spreading through his body.

“I guess I am, Kat. How about you?”

“Yeah, sure. Although it’s not exactly a wild party.” There was something almost impish about her grin, a hint of devil-may-care attitude that Lee suddenly found quite endearing.

“Not up to your usual standards?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Apollo,” she answered with a dirty laugh that made his cock twitch.

He tamped down any thought of Kara – she’d quit on him, cut him loose just as he thought he might close the deal with her, it was her loss – and gave Kat an appraising glance.

“Wanna dance?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she replied, sliding off the barstool and taking his proffered hand.

It wasn’t quite like it had been with Kara, but Kat was warm and curvy and limber in his arms, and the woman could dance. There was enough booze and hormones sloshing around his system to make him receptive to any opening, and besides Lee had been celibate now for a couple of months, ever since the world as he knew it had ended, and he was beginning to feel the itch.

When Kat pressed herself against him, hip to hip, teasing his arousal, he didn’t resist, played along. The last time they’d socialized, she hadn’t exactly been reticent, so when the music slowed down Lee seized the opportunity and let his hand stray low on her back, fingertips brushing the curve of her ass.

“So, Apollo,” she whispered into his neck, her hot breath on his skin, “Are frat regs less of an issue on Colonial Day?”

Apparently they were, because a half-hour later Lee was following Kat down some complicated corridors, swigging from a bottle of something – definitely not ambrosia but better than moonshine – that he’d swiped off an empty table on his way out. He was drunker than he’d been in a long while, drunk enough to think that frakking one of his nuggets wasn’t such a bad idea any more.

Kat stopped in front of a numbered door and pulled out a key.

“Where are we?” Lee asked.

“ _Cloud Nine_ staff quarters. Friend of mine works here, got me a key.”

“And we’ve become staff for the evening?”

She grinned at him as the door swung open, revealing a small cabin with a couple of bunks and nothing much else.

“Well we’ve been doing the security here, right? We’re owed.”

As he crossed the threshold, Lee staggered and caught himself on the frame, conscious all of the sudden about how wrecked he was, and the image of Kara – decked out in her fancy blue dress – flashed through his mind. She’d left, he told himself again – she’d cut him loose, she didn’t want him, and Kat did. Gods he needed this – needed some closeness, some intimacy, some sex, godsdammit – something to pretend that life was going on and they weren’t all doomed on a flight to nowhere, pursued by avenging enemies who wouldn’t stop until every human was extinct.

And then his brain shut down as Kat grabbed his sash, pulled him into the room and kissed him, all wet tongue and hot lips, and his dick took over.

She was a live wire, hands all over him and he let himself respond in kind, groping her breasts through her dress, shoving her against a bunk, one hand sliding up her dress until he reached her underwear and pushed two fingers under the elastic and into her damp cleft. Her legs parted to allow him better access and he took advantage, sliding inside her, frakking her with his hand, and she was panting and moaning while desperately trying to pull his clothes off, getting tangled in his absurd ceremonial gear.

“Hang on,” Lee said, pushing her gently so she toppled onto the bed with a disappointed groan as his fingers slipped out. He quickly unbuckled his sash and undid his coat, pulled off his tanks and proceeded to get Kat out of her clingy dress, which proved a little harder than he’d thought.

Five minutes later they were down to their underwear – Lee’s pants having gone south in the melee – and he was braced over her, kissing her neck and shoulder and mouth while she dug her nails into his back.

Maybe it was the booze, or more likely his own personal obsession, but whenever he closed his eyes he saw Kara in front of him, under him, imagined Kat’s moans as hers, and it was both intensely arousing and rather disturbing. He tried to keep his eyes open, to focus on his partner, but it was a struggle.

When Kat managed to pull off his shorts and free his cock, he gasped; when she pushed down her panties and opened up to him, urging him on with breathy moans, he thought his heart would stop, and then, gods, there he was, plunging into her and she was every bit as hot and slick and welcoming as he could have hoped.

As the rhythm picked up, and her moans, he let his eyes close again and godsdamn he was thinking of Kara again, lying under him, short blonde hair fanned on the thin pillow, her lips parted and her eyes losing focus as she crested towards orgasm, and took him closer to the point of no return.

Had he been sober, Lee might have been able to recover control of the situation, but the combined drunkenness and desperation were too much for him, and in a few short minutes he suddenly found himself on the brink of coming, his thrusts erratic.

“Oh, frak, Kara,” he groaned as his climax overcame him, and as the words left his mouth he realized his mistake.

The comedown was both more brutal and more embarrassing than usual. The minute he’d uttered Kara’s name, Kat had stilled under him, and now, while he was still shuddering over her, she was looking at him with a mixture of hurt and anger that made him feel like a complete heel.

“I’m sorry…” he tried to apologize, but she looked away.

“Don’t.”

He pulled out of her, feeling awkward and exposed; aware in all this that he’d signally failed to make her come, and that he’d just committed possibly the worst breach of frakking etiquette.

There was nothing more to say, really, except mutter some kind of goodbye as he picked up his discarded uniform and got dressed haphazardly before leaving the room. Kat lay on the bed, barely covered with a sheet she’d pulled over herself. He stopped in the doorway and tried again.

“Really, I didn’t mean–“

She cut him off.

“Should’ve known better. Just go.”

He walked out and closed the door. Ahead of him lay a long, guilt-ridden night roaming the corridors of _Cloud Nine_ , until he could beg a ride home. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

 

*******************************

Kara’s crowing could be heard from halfway down the corridor leading to the rec room, indicating a game in progress, and Lee smiled despite himself. Her enthusiasm for triad was infectious, and perhaps that was exactly what he needed to deal with his hangover and lack of sleep.

“What, there’s a card game and no-one told me?” he called out cheerfully as he stepped through the hatch. Then he caught Kat’s glare and stopped in his tracks.

Frak. Of course she would be here.

Crashdown smirked at him. “Back on your feet so soon after last night, Apollo?”

“Yeah – I could say the same to you,” Lee shot back. “Hey guys. Kat, how you doing?”

“Fine, _sir_.” Her tone was icy, her face impassive. “Would you like to play? Maybe you’d like to sit next to Captain Thrace?”

“Sure, Lee, why don’t you pull up a pew?”

She smiled up at him, welcoming, and he couldn’t look her in the eye. Oh gods, this was all wrong and it was his fault – he’d been a thoughtless asshole, and he was paying the price. He forced a smile in return but his face felt strained.

“No, it’s okay, Kara, I’ve got things to do.”

He knew as he walked off that he probably should have brazened it out, that she was bound to figure something out – given Kat’s reaction, and the fact he hadn’t slept in his bunk – but he just didn’t have the strength, especially not after the night he’d had. Instead, he headed for the hangar deck and a long session of one-on-one Viper maintenance. Machines he could handle.

He was feeding ammo into his port gun when Kara walked onto the deck and marched up to him, her face set. Lee took a deep breath and braced himself. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Going hunting?” she asked, circling his bird.

“I need to check the aim on the port side – it’s been slightly off recently. I thought I’d take her for a spin.”

“Sure. Work on your aim. We don’t want the arrow of Apollo to miss its target, do we?” There was more than a trace of contempt in her voice, and he bristled.

“Very funny, Kara. And the point is?”

“Nothing. I wondered, how are your nuggets doing? How’s Kat?”

“You’re the one who was playing triad with her a couple of hours ago, Kara, you tell me.”

“So what – she’s a love’em and leave’em kind of girl?”

He counted to five before replying, focusing on the task at hand, until he knew his voice was steady.

“I guess.”

“Ships that just pass in the night?”

“Yup.”

“Didn’t mean a thing.”

“Nope.”

“Just bored, something to do. So frakking one of your nuggets – in breach of every frat regulation in the Fleet – seemed like a great way to waste some time.”

Lee adjusted the gun and walked around the wing in search of his toolbox to tighten a few nuts, Kara following him like a vengeful shadow breathing down his neck. His skin was prickling.

“You want something from me?”

“Not a thing.” Her tone was almost shrill.

“Cause I don’t owe you _anything_ ,” he hissed.

“No, you don’t owe me anything ‘cause I’m just a CAG and you’re just a pilot.”

“Right.”

“A pilot who can’t keep his pants on.”

Suddenly he couldn’t take it anymore. He spun around and faced her.

“If you’re thinking of reporting me, go ahead. But you’re not exactly blameless in that department, Kara Thrace. I seem to remember a time when frakking nuggets was just your ticket.”

For the second time in twelve hours, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut, but it was too late and Kara’s punch caught him square in the jaw. He hit back reflexively, but pulled it at the last minute, landing it on her cheekbone. She staggered back and brought a hand to her cheek.

For a few heartbeats, they stood in front of each other, silent. Lee was dimly aware of the presence of others in the background, and cursed himself for being such a frakwit. The CAG and one of her pilots trading blows on the deck wasn’t exactly good practice, and he could only imagine what the scuttlebutt would make of it.

“You didn’t use to be this kind of guy, Lee, what the frak happened to you? Why d’you do it?” she said with a sigh.

Somehow her tone of defeat was a thousand times worse than her belligerent stance, and Lee couldn’t stand there and face her. He was ashamed, and angry at himself; and frankly would have given his eyeteeth to go back in time and erase the previous night. Without looking back at her, he gathered his tools and picked up his bag.

“Cause I’m a screw-up, Kara,” he said as he walked away. “Try and keep that in mind.”

She didn’t call after him, and Lee was thankful. The last thing he wanted to do now was talk anything over. His hangover was still pounding at him, and his jaw throbbed where her fist had landed. He was bone-tired, covered in grease, and needed a shower and his rack before his next CAP in a few hours’ time. A dressing-down from his CAG would have to wait.

Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to forgive her for abandoning him last night after that dance which had worked him up to fever pitch – there was a lot of unfinished business there that he intended to deal with one day. But not now.

 

******************************

 

Whether by accident or by design, neither Kat nor Kara featured in his next few CAP rotations. It wasn’t that surprising – as one of the senior pilots, he rarely got paired with the CAG, unless she made it happen; as for Kat, she was getting to the point where she no longer needed close monitoring. But he couldn’t help wonder whether Kara had tweaked the rosters to fit. She certainly wasn’t going out of her way to cross paths with him, and the most he saw of her for a few days was her sleeping form on her rack when he got in late.

She must have switched shifts by the end of that week, because he walked into the officers’ head at 2300 one night to find her wrapped in a flimsy towel in front of a basin. Her hair was damp and there was a trail of droplets on the flushed skin of her shoulders that suddenly brought back memories of their dance together, of the blood rising on her neck as they molded their body to each other’s, and he took a deep breath.

“Kara.”

“Lee.”

She nodded at him. Was it his impression, or did she look slightly guilty when their eyes met in the mirror?

“Didn’t know you were still up.”

“Maintenance and paperwork,” Kara said, squeezing a thin stripe of toothpaste onto her brush.

“A CAG’s work is never done?”

She snorted around a mouthful of toothbrush and started cleaning her teeth vigorously, putting an end to the conversation. Lee walked into a shower cubicle and stripped rapidly, hoping against his better judgment that there was enough hot water left to wash off the sweat and grime of the day. There wasn’t, and he forced himself to stand under barely tepid water for a minute or so as he scrubbed frantically.

Kara was still there when he came out, bare-chested and shivering.

“Would it have killed you to leave me some hot water?”

“It ran out halfway through my shower. Sorry.”

“Bastards.”

She was still avoiding his gaze, and it was beginning to bother him.

“For what it’s worth…” her voice trailed off.

“What?”

“I’m sorry I hit you. The other day.”

She was chewing her lip and still wouldn’t look him in the eye. Lee shrugged.

“I was being an asshole. Besides, I hit you back.”

“Hardly.” She touched her cheek, barely bruised, with a small smile. “I can tell when you pull your punches, Lee Adama.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

He rubbed his jaw, which was still sore, and she winced.

“Frak, Lee, I didn’t mean to…”

“Yes, you did.”

Gingerly, Kara reached out and pressed her fingertips to his face, almost caressing him, and Lee felt his heartbeat quicken. He became aware of how close they were standing to each other in the cramped confines of the head, and how little they were wearing.

“I really am sorry,” she whispered.

“Why did you leave?”

“What?”

“The dance. You just upped and left me standing there. Why?”

She let her hand drop and looked away from him, her cheeks reddening.

“Don’t push it, Lee,” she said, her voice low. “This is…”

He leaned closer into her, the blood coursing through his veins. Maybe he was too tired now to care about the consequences of his actions, or maybe he was just fed up with all the time wasting – when time was the commodity they least had to spare – but he didn’t want to let her duck out of this again.

“This is a dance we’ve been dancing for a long time, Kara, and don’t tell me you don’t know it,” he murmured into her ear.

In truth, he wasn’t sure to what extent that statement applied to her – he knew he’d been hopelessly obsessed with her for years now, but all he could say for certain was that since they had met again he had felt a response from her. Perhaps it was just his own yearning seeking an echo, but the night of the dance had really felt like a shared moment.

“Lee, please,” she breathed out, but she didn’t move away from him and that emboldened him. He shifted slightly, crowding her against the basin, their legs touching. Her breathing was shallow, and he was willing to bet his last cubit that she was getting as aroused as he was. His hand snaked up to her hip, and she shivered under his touch.

“Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll stop,” he said before his lips descended on her neck, brushing past her pulse point. To his immense relief, she kept silent. He kissed her neck, her jawline, and when he finally reached her mouth it was obvious that she wanted this as much as he did, because she exhaled a moan and parted her lips eagerly.

Kissing Kara was everything he’d hoped it would be, and then some. If Kat had been a live wire (and gods, why the hell couldn’t he focus on the girl in his arms, for once), Kara was like molten lava, burning up in his arms and echoing his ardor at every turn.

Lee had no idea how long they kissed like teenagers against the cold basin, hands roaming – at last – on each other’s heated bodies when the sound of the hatch wheel spinning stopped them cold.

“Frak,” Kara hissed as they stepped away from each other. She adjusted her towel, which was threatening to fall off. Her nipples were proudly standing at attention, and she considered them critically before looking at Lee, who had wedged himself against the basin on the hope that the cool metal would help bring down his obvious erection.

“Yeah, you think you have a problem?” he mouthed at her before bending over to splash water over his face as Racetrack trudged in and headed for a cubicle.

It took a good few minutes of not looking at Kara before he could walk out, and he had to focus. The sound of her footsteps following his, of her dogtags jangling (which instantly brought her breasts to mind), was threatening to send him back into an embarrassing state of arousal.

The bunkroom was quiet, most of the racks occupied by sleeping pilots, and Lee hesitated as he looked through the open hatch. Kara shoved past him and dumped her washbag on the table in front of her locker. She turned to him.

“What?” she whispered in response to his raised eyebrows.

He gestured towards their sleeping colleagues.

She smiled. “Get some clothes and come with me.”

They dressed quickly side by side, and this time Lee ogled her as much as he could, and was gratified to notice she did the same, her gaze lingering on his returning erection.

“Stop that,” he hissed. “I’ll never get my pants on.”

“Fine by me,” she said with a giggle, and they had to look away from each other before they cracked up and woke everyone around them. Halfway through, Racetrack walked back in and hit her rack with barely an acknowledgement and Lee thought he could hear her snoring within two minutes of the curtain being pulled.

Once they were dressed – sweats and tanks for him, with underwear for once, because he needed something to contain his priapic urges; BDUs and a hooded top, zipper sinfully low, no bra, for her – they tiptoed out of the locker with their boots in hand.

“So,” he asked after they’d spun the hatch closed and pulled on their boots without bothering to lace them. “Where too, sir?” and for a split second she looked at him with alarm in her eyes, as if she’d only just remembered she was his CAG and this was wrong, but he smiled at her and the look was gone.

“Follow me,” was all she said, and he did.

The battlestar was deserted, near enough – most of the personnel awake were at their watch stations, and there was always a reduced crew manning the ship between midnight and 0600 – but they didn’t touch each other. Lee was acutely aware that if they started kissing again he probably wouldn’t be able to stop, and he didn’t want that to happen in a corridor, no matter how few people they were likely to run into.

Abruptly, Kara stopped and tapped in a security code next to an unmarked hatch. Lee hadn’t been keeping track of where they were going – he was expecting the cramped CAG’s office – so he was surprised when they walked into a largish room with an oval table, a dozen chairs and a couch. There were star charts on the walls, a couple of whiteboards, and, poignantly, a holographic map of their home system, the twelve worlds and their moons sparkling in the bleak light.

“What the…? What is this place?”

“A meeting room nobody ever uses, and virtually everyone has forgotten about. With a high-clearance access code.”

She smirked at him, clearly proud of herself.

“So what, only the XO or the Commander could walk in on us?”

Kara snorted. “Something like that. But I have it on good authority that Commander Adama is in his rack, and Tigh on duty in CIC, so…”

“So if I did this,” Lee interrupted, closing in on her and wrapping an arm around her waist, “we’d be unlikely to get caught?”

He gathered her close and dipped his head to the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent, and she made a little sigh of contentment that spurred him on. Carefully, he traced the side of her face with his lips and kissed her lightly on the mouth, then again, and again, more forcefully each time.

His hands itched to pull down the zipper on her sweatshirt, but he held fast, focusing on her mouth, her hungry lips, the tongue that darted into his mouth and danced with his, firing up his synapses like nothing – no _one_ – else. They had been waiting so long for this – well, he had, at any rate – he wanted to enjoy every damn second of it; and postpone the inevitable frenzied groping as long as he could bear it.

“Ah, Lee,” Kara sighed into his mouth when he pulled back to catch his breath and the huskiness of her tone went straight to his groin, shattering his already shaky self-restraint. He exhaled sharply, almost a sob, and reached for the tantalizing zipper, pulling it down with one sharp tug and plunging both hands inside her shirt. His thumbs found her nipples erect and tender, and Kara arched into his touch with unmistakable eagerness, her breath turning shallow and panting.

Her breasts were every bit as glorious to the touch as they had looked from afar, and evidently sensitive as hell, because she was moaning and pushing against his hands. He ground his aching cock against her pelvis, dry-humping her against the bulkhead like a horny teenager.

With an immense effort of will he pulled himself back from the brink and fought to recover his breath. Somewhere in all the training techniques he’d learnt – combat, survival, warfare – there had to be something he could draw on to control his overeager drive before he disgraced himself.

“Gods, why are you stopping?” Kara panted, sending him back to square one. He had to focus.

“For no reason. Just give me a second here.”

“Are you… is the great Apollo worried about coming in his pants?” she said with a giggle, and he lunged at her, digging his fingers under her ribs and making her yelp.

“Shut up!”

“Oh, this is priceless – really, has it been that long?”

He didn’t answer, just stared at her briefly, and she bit her lip.

“Oh yeah, right. Frak.”

That made him laugh.

“Good idea, actually. Want to move to somewhere more comfortable?”

He pointed across the room to the functional gray couch, wrapped his hand around her wrist and marched her there, Kara pretending to resist all the way. They struggled briefly when they got to it, each trying to trip the other, and fell together on the spartan cushions. Lee managed to get the upper hand, flipping Kara onto her back and straddling her, her arms caught between his thighs. She wriggled a bit, then stopped and lay there, her chest heaving with exertion, and he was mesmerized by the sight of her breasts spilling out of her shirt.

“Hey soldier, my face is up here,” she teased.

“Just enjoying the view, captain.”

And he was, gods, after all this time pretending he didn’t see her, trying not to look when they shared unisex quarters, showered next to each other, slept in parallel bunks.

“Well I won’t mind if you don’t,” she said, pointedly staring at the bulge in his pants, which was in her direct line of sight. “Nice package, lieutenant.”

“Thank you. Nice tits.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and that was enough provocation; Lee leaned over and caught it between his teeth, just hard enough for her to feel it, before swallowing it in a wet sloppy kiss. Braced with his hands on either side of her head, he proceeded to kiss Kara thoroughly, sliding his legs down until he was stretched out on top of her. The couch was too narrow for them to lie side by side, but she wasn’t complaining, just making soft noises of encouragement into his mouth, her hips rocking slowly into his in delicious friction.

Part of him couldn’t believe this was actually happening, and he kept wondering whether he was about to wake up – sweaty and out of breath in his tangled sheets with an erection that could hammer nails. His body however was perfectly willing to go ahead with this as far as it would take him, and frak the consequences.

His mouth started tracing a path down her body, from her lips to her ear, down her neck, slowly, licking and nibbling his way progressively lower towards her cleavage, until he was nose to nipple and she was panting in anticipation. He touched the tip with his tongue and she gasped; then he teased it until it was a stiff peak and he took it into his mouth, making her squirm.

She was undulating under him, alternately thrusting her breasts and her pelvis against him, and the rhythmic movement was driving Lee crazy. If that was Kara’s response to nipple stimulation, he could only imagine what she’d be like when he got further down, and the thought titillated him enough that he let go of her breast with a pop and started his move south.

“Don’t stop, Lee, you frakker,” she panted, but he ignored her and focused on unzipping the rest of her top with his teeth while his hands busied themselves with the buttons on her fatigues. She caught on pretty swiftly and joined in the effort, allowing them to get rid of the pants (no underwear, he noted with approval) in record time while she kicked her boots off.

At that point, Lee stopped and took a deep breath, looking at Kara spread out under him like an offering, mostly naked except for her unzipped sweater, which just made her look more appealing. Her limbs were splayed in surrender and she was trembling with anticipation. Gods, she was like the epitome of eroticism, from her eyes – radiating desire and vulnerability – to her parted lips, to the rise and fall of her chest with every rapid breath and the glint of moisture at the juncture of her thighs.

“Suck me, frak me, finger me, whatever you want but for the gods’ sake _touch me_ ,” she urged him, her voice desperate, and the remainder of his restraint evaporated. He dipped his head to her and licked a stripe from her bellybutton down towards her clit, stopping just short of it. He repeated it twice, then switched to the crease of her leg, then the opposite inner thigh, teasing her until she grabbed his hair with one hand and pulled him to her cunt, grinding against his face.

The scent and taste of her surrounded him, overwhelming his senses as he tried to satisfy her with lips and tongue, worried her clit gently with his teeth, alternated lapping and sucking while she whimpered softly. He had dreamt of this so many times, and now that he was really here, he found his mind could barely process the sensations. His own desire was almost forgotten as he sought to lead her to climax – just a distant throbbing in his groin that just served to anchor him in reality. Her moans became louder, her breathing more ragged, and he tried to maintain the pace of his caresses, his jaw aching under the strain, until suddenly she cried out his name and he felt a surge of pride as she broke against his mouth.

When she stopped shaking, he lifted his head and looked across at her and gods – she had never been so beautiful as she was now, all liquid eyes and flushed cheeks, her hair matted with sweat. There was a faint smile playing on her lips as she looked back at him almost fondly – if he could imagine applying that expression to Kara, which wasn’t sure he could.

“Gods, Lee, what else have you been keeping from me all these years?”

“You’re just going to have to be patient,” he murmured, crawling back up her body, dropping kisses on her heated skin, until he reached her lips, so soft and willing that he could lose himself in them. They kissed, entwined, for long minutes, Kara relaxed and languorous under him, as he never thought he’d have her, but as he shifted his weight to spare her, he pressed his erection into her hip, and she giggled.

“Have I been neglecting you?”

“I can wait,” he said, and to his surprise he meant it.

“Well maybe I can’t, flyboy,” she murmured in his ear, snaking a hand between them. “Frak, you’re still fully clothed – how did that happen?”

Lee shrugged. “I got carried away.”

“Did you now?” she said, palming his cock through his pants, and he bucked his hips with a groan, because gods _damn_ that felt good.

It felt even better when she worked her way into his sweats and his underwear – strong cool fingers wrapped around his stone hard shaft, stroking him leisurely – with a look in her eyes that probably meant he’d last five minutes tops.

“You can’t expect to do _that_ to me and not get anything in return,” she whispered, her tongue darting out to lick his earlobe and the curve of his neck, her hand settling into a regular rhythm that had Lee rocking steadily into her fist, driven by a desperate urge he could no longer control.

“Kara, gods, Kara,” he panted, oblivious to everything except the feel of her hand on him, and the knowledge that – finally – he was living the fantasy that had eluded him for so long.

“Come for me, Lee,” was all she had to say before he erupted in a whiteout of pleasure and release that ripped through his body and left him boneless and grateful as he collapsed over her.

Sleep threatened to swamp him immediately, his earlier exhaustion coming back with a vengeance, but he fought the post-orgasmic fatigue with all the willpower he could summon and shifted his weight onto his elbow. Kara smiled at him sleepily and stroked his hair, the tenderness of the gesture both unexpected and surprisingly touching, and he felt emotion welling through him. On impulse, he reached out, grabbed her hand and dragged it to his lips, kissing the inside of her wrist. She smelled of Fleet-issue soap, leather, and something like cinnamon, except he was pretty sure there was no cinnamon left in the world.

“So how come we’ve never done this before?” she asked. “And don’t say frat regs, you know that’s bullshit.”

Her look was pure mischief, but Lee couldn’t answer the question. There were plenty of reasons this hadn’t happened earlier, starting with Zak and not even ending with his father, not to mention the distance between them, but in the end it didn’t explain how they had managed to keep apart for so long.

“Denial?” he hazarded.

She looked at him like he was insane, and next thing he knew they were both shaking with laughter, to the point where his arm gave way and he collapsed back onto Kara, setting her off once more.

“Lee, I can’t frakking breathe!” she hiccupped and eventually he managed to roll off her and wedge himself in the few remaining inches of couch. His eyes were streaming as he fought to regain his breath. Kara wasn’t much better, but he didn’t dare look at her in the eye for fear of triggering another attack of the giggles.

Eventually the hysteria calmed down and they were just lying next to each other, tangled limbs suffused with the warm afterglow of sexual release. Lee nuzzled her neck and Kara made a contented little noise.

“Do you think anyone would notice if we didn’t get back to our racks?” Lee whispered in her ear, and Kara giggled.

“Yes. But I’m not sure I care.”

He wasn’t going to argue with that, so he just wrapped himself around her as best he could and let sleep claim him.

Sometime later, Kara woke him up by shaking his shoulder gently and he realized as he regained consciousness that he was getting cold despite sharing her bodily warmth.

“We should go back,” she said to him, eyes intent on his. Gods but she looked beautiful with her hair wild and her lips still a little swollen from their earlier kisses. At this point, Lee wanted nothing more than to pull her back down over him to start afresh, to explore her body anew with his mouth, his hands, his cock – except that it was something like 0300 and they were due to be up in a scant few hours to protect the fleet.

He propped himself on his elbows and reached up towards her to kiss her but she only let their lips brush briefly together.

“Unh-unh,” she said. “I know exactly what’s going to happen if we start this again. And I need some sleep, flyboy.”

“You’re such a damn killjoy, sir,” he grumbled, scrabbling around the couch for the various bits of his clothing he’d scattered there.

She let him steal a couple of kisses on the way back to the bunkroom. The last one – outside the hatch – threatened to turn into another passionate clinch when the sound of footsteps in the corridor interrupted them. He spun the wheel quickly and they slipped into the room before whoever it was caught them together. Lee considered briefly dragging Kara into his rack, but didn’t attempt anything, and was pleasantly surprised when she dropped a last kiss on his lips before heading for her bed.

His bunk was opposite hers, and he stripped quickly to his boxers and a single tank and lay down on the mattress, pulling the privacy curtain part of the way across. She’d done the same, and she smiled at him across the gap.

“Goodnight Lee,” she mouthed at him, and he blew her a kiss.

****************************

“Come on, Apollo, you’re going to miss breakfast!”

Crashdown shook his arm a little harder than necessary and moved off once Lee had opened his eyes.

“Okay, thanks,” he muttered, noting with disappointment that Kara’s bunk was already empty. A quick glance at his watch confirmed it was indeed nearing the breakfast cutoff point even for the late shift, and he forced himself out of bed despite every bone in his body protesting. He could still smell her on his skin, and he figured he probably needed to wash that off, even though part of him wanted to stay in bed and reminisce about last night.

By the time Lee had taken a rushed shower, brushed his teeth and changed into a clean pair of sweats, he barely had time to run across to the mess and grab a tray of food. There were only a handful of people scattered across the tables, but he was glad to see a familiar blonde head bowed over her tray, shoveling spoonfuls of cereal into her mouth as fast as she could.

As he walked up to her he was aware of a queasy feeling in his stomach, wondering whether she’d acknowledge him as her usual friend and fellow pilot, or as that something else that they had become to each other last night.

“Morning,” he said as cheerfully as he could, sliding into the seat across from her, and he felt his heart lift when she raised her head and smiled back at him.

“You could have woken me up,” he added with a touch of reproach, his voice lower.

Kara shrugged, eyes mischievous.

“I figured you needed your sleep.”

“Well, thanks. I did. Just as well Crashdown reminded me they were about to stop serving breakfast, because I also need refueling.”

“I bet you do,” she retorted with a saucy grin and he ducked his head to hide his answering blush. Gods, at this rate he was going to have to drag her back to the empty conference room before their shifts started.

“I’ve got to go,” she said with what he liked to think was a hint of regret. “I’m due to meet with Tigh in CIC. Catch you later?”

“Later,” he said, and he looked after her wistfully as she marched off, wondering if he had time to take another – longer – shower before hitting the deck for much-needed Viper maintenance.

Events conspired to keep them apart all day and – thanks to an unexpected Cylon patrol – half the night. By the time Lee had a chance to hit his rack he was wiped out and barely noticed Kara hadn’t yet made it to bed before oblivion claimed him.

Sometime in the middle of a random dream of firefights and exploding Vipers he was dragged back to the land of the living by a cold body slipping under his warm blanket and a hand pressed against his mouth. He resisted the urge to bite it and opened his eyes, heart beating wildly. Kara was propped over him, pupils huge in the semi-darkness, mouth pursed in a silent hush.

“Don’t say a word,” she whispered, removing her hand, “and that’s an order, lieutenant.”

“What are you doing here?” he mouthed at her silently.

“I got bored,” she whispered back. “And everyone else is asleep.”

“ _I_ was asleep,” he protested with mock outrage.

“Well you’re not anymore, and if you keep talking, no one else will be,” she hissed. “And I ordered you to shut up, didn’t I?”

He opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it, and raised an eyebrow instead in query.

“Now,” she murmured, her mouth close to his ear, so he could feel her warm breath, “you’re going to have to suffer the consequences of your insubordination.”

Even without the wicked twinkle in her eye, there was enough promise in her tone to make him harden in anticipation, something Kara couldn’t help but notice, wedged as she was against him. She rewarded him with a little wriggle, and he bit his lip in an effort not to moan.

“Feeling frisky, LT?”

Gods, but he was, with every fiber of his body, yet he was determined to let her do all the work this time and lay stock still, staring up at her with a crooked grin.

In retrospect, it was possibly a dangerous move, because Kara obviously took it as a challenge and proceeded to attempt to drive him insane with lust. She started by teasing him with her mouth, hovering above his face and neck, close enough for her lips to brush him but not to kiss him, her mouth half-open, her tongue just touching his ear, his eager mouth, the hollow of his neck, until he was half-crazed with the need to kiss her.

Still he held on, because it had become a contest of wills, and he was damned if he was going to let Kara win that one.

She kept going for a while, then realized that he was resisting her and switched tactics, electing to kiss him, long and deep, swallowing Lee’s gasp as he opened his mouth to her. How long they kissed he couldn’t tell, but now the focus was on his hands, which he balled into fists at his side to stop himself from groping her all over.

It was sweet torture, because Kara was rubbing herself against him as she kissed him, her hips purposefully bucking into his by-now-very-solid erection. He angled up towards her and she sighed into his mouth. Frak, she was actually getting herself off on him, or nearly – he could feel the damp warmth of her through two pairs of their underwear, her clit pressing insistently against his cock – and he couldn’t not thrust back in answer.

Now she was the one trying to stop herself from moaning while she rode him, and the sight of her face as she was poised on the edge of ecstasy was one Lee filed away for future use, because there were few images more arousing in his own private repertoire. He decided at the last minute to free himself from his self-imposed paralysis and snaked a hand out to clamp it on her mouth when he saw her about to cry out in orgasm, in the desperate hope that it would be enough to stop her from waking the entire bunkroom. She bit down on the fleshy part of his palm, enough to hurt, but didn’t make a sound as she came, shaking, and collapsed over him.

“Oh, Lee,” she breathed out in his ear as he released her mouth, and he had to summon his last reserves not to let go at that moment. But he wanted more, and now he had the upper hand. Without waiting for her to stop trembling, he flipped her over – easily, she had no resistance left in her – and reached down to pull both their briefs out of the way. Kara was slick and pliant under his fingers, and it took only a few seconds for his achingly hard cock to plunge into her welcoming heat.

This time he was powerless to stop her long moan, but frankly he didn’t care anymore – at this stage, even the prospect of performing to an audience wasn’t going to interrupt him. She was obviously on the same wavelength, answering his thrusts by bucking her hips against his with unrestrained passion and pulling his head down to hers in a frantic kiss.

“Please, please, please,” she panted into his mouth as he angled his cock to hit deeper inside her and she arched in response, clearly close to another climax. He closed his eyes and started calculating random jump coordinates in his head, in a desperate bid to avoid coming before she did. She felt so absolutely right around him – tight and hot and so godsdamn perfect – it was like finally coming home, and more than anything he wanted to lose himself in her.

“Oh gods,” Kara gasped as she suddenly stilled, and he felt her shudder around and under him and took his cue to let go and come with her. The pleasure came in long waves, releasing a barrier within him that had him on the verge of tears as he abandoned himself to the feeling.

They clung to each other for long minutes, breathing heavily, basking in the afterglow, until Kara groaned, shifting under his weight and Lee rolled off of her carefully. She was flushed in the dim light and looked both happy and sheepish as she motioned to the curtain. He realized the room was more silent than it ought to be, with none of the small noises he was used to in shared sleeping quarters.

“Do you think they…” he mouthed at Kara, and she shrugged helplessly.

“Probably,” she mouthed back, wrinkling her nose.

Strangely, Lee didn’t feel as embarrassed as he thought he would be. He wasn’t overjoyed at having shared one of the most momentous sexual experiences of his life with half a dozen of his comrades, but better than not having just slept with the woman he’d wanted for years. And while he knew there might be hell to pay, and that discretion in those circumstances – Kara being his superior officer, for a start, not to mention their complete disregard for frat regs – would have made it far easier, he was still on enough of a high to handle it.

More importantly, Kara didn’t seem all that upset, and she had much more to lose than he did in this situation, although Lee suspected that the exceptional circumstances under which they were operating might lead to more leniency than it would have in the past.

Besides, everyone knew that battlestars were hotbeds of sexual intrigue and general debauchery, and there was no reason for _Galactica_ to be different from any of the others. _Except that your CO is also your dad_ , his brain conveniently supplied at that juncture, and he cringed.

“What?” Kara whispered, seeing his face.

He shook his head, trying to dispel the image, and at that precise moment someone cleared their throat in the bunkroom, signaling their time was up.

Lee pulled aside a corner of his privacy curtain and looked out. He swore under his breath – all the other pilots were awake, starting with Racetrack, who caught his eye and shot him a grin.

“Well, hello there Apollo,” she called out cheerfully. “Say, do you have any idea where the CAG’s gone to? Looks like she stepped away from her rack.”

Lee groaned, his face flaming. They were so busted.

“I wouldn’t worry about her,” he said. “Starbuck knows how to look after herself.”

“You bet!” Crashdown said with a laugh, and several of the pilots snickered while Lee endured the ritual mortification with stoicism.

Racetrack was looking at him with a mixture of admiration and pity.

“Apollo, you’re crazy,” she said. “C’mon, guys, show’s over – it’s bedtime – early shift starts in 90 minutes.”

“Yeah, LT. It was bedtime a couple hours ago too,” Skulls complained from his rack. “I didn’t plan on waking up.

“Shut up, Skulls.”

“Okay,” he muttered. “But Gaeta better pay up tomorrow.”

These last words chilled Lee as he drew the curtain back. Gaeta was notorious for taking bets on pretty much anything on board. He turned to Kara, who also looked stunned.

“There’s a bet running on us?” he asked her under his breath, as discreetly as he could.

Kara shook her head.

“Sons of bitches!”

“I can’t believe the bastards.”

“I wonder how much is in the pot?” she mused as he dropped his head into his hands and shuddered at the thought of the whole wing speculating on their sex life. “Maybe we can scam some of it back at the triad table.”

“Gods, Kara, you’re incorrigible,” he sighed. But there was something very reassuring about the fact that she was taking it in stride. He wrapped an arm around her and brought her close, wondering whether she was going to resist, but she melted into his embrace.

“Ok,” he said quietly into her hair, inhaling her scent. “Now will you tell me what changed your mind since Colonial Day? I mean, apart the fact that you obviously can’t resist my devastating charm?”

She froze, and he wondered whether he’d made the mistake of his life. But he wanted to know whether this was just an intense fling, or something more, because he figured now that everyone knew, he might as well drag it out into the open.

“Gods, Lee, you can’t leave well alone, can you?” she muttered.

“Nope.”

Kara exhaled slowly, and appeared to be steeling herself.

“I was scared, okay? I thought it was the moment, and the dress, and the ambrosia, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it.”

“And now?” he prompted, his eyes on hers.

“Now I’m still not sure what this is, or whether I can handle it, but, frak, it’s a lot more fun than I’ve had in ages,” she said with a rueful smile.

“Good. Because it’s more fun than I’ve had for a while, too.”

“Oh – next thing you’re going to tell me you live like a monk. That’s not what I’ve heard,” she teased.

Lee hesitated, and decided he might as well come clean.

“This… I’ve wanted this for a long time, Kara. Since I met you, pretty much, and it damn near killed me when Zak – Zak had the balls to ask you out and you went for him.”

“What the frak – Lee?” Kara said, looking shocked. “How the hell was I supposed to know?”

He shrugged. “You weren’t.”

She was staring at him now with a frown.

“I thought… I don’t know why, I guess, but I thought you always, sort of, looked down on me.”

Lee closed his eyes. Oh, hell.

“Frak, Kara, no. _Never_.”

There was silence for a few moments, then she squeezed his hand and he laced his fingers with hers.

“So, to return the question you asked me earlier,” she whispered, “what made you come out with it now?”

“Well, it’s the end of the world, Kara, I thought I should confess my sins. Also, I figured there was an outside chance you might not kick me out of bed.”

“It’s your rack,” she snorted, and Lee grabbed her and kissed her, slow and deep.

It _was_ the end of the world, and they were probably doomed – the gods knew that they, more than anyone, risked their lives every damn day out in their Vipers. But he was willing to seize his moment of joy. Even the prospect of facing down the Old Man and the might of Fleet regulations wasn’t enough to dampen his exhilaration. Besides, Lee suspected his father might not be totally opposed to the relationship.

For the first time in more than two years, things were looking up in his life.


End file.
